A SKETCH OF THE HAKLUYT-MARTYR (1587) MAP.
[This sketch-map is taken from the fac-simile in Stevens’s Historical and Geographical Notes, and needs the following key:—
1. Groenlandia.
2. Islandia.
3. Frislandia.
4. Meta incognita ab Anglis inventa An. 1576.
5. Demonum ins.
6. S. Brandon.
7. Baccalaos ab Anglis, 1496.
8. Hochelaga.
9. Nova Albion inventa An. 1580, ab Anglis.
10. Nova Francia.
11. Virginia, 1584.
12. Bermuda.
13. Azores.
14. Florida.
15. Nueva Mexico.
16. Nova Hispania.
17. Caribana.
18. Brasilia.
19. Fretum Magellani.
20. Peru.
This map is so rare that the copies in some of the choicest collections lack it, such as the Huth (p. 920,) Brinley (no. 42), and Carter-Brown (no. 370). Rich priced a copy in 1832 with the map at £4 4s., which would to-day be a small sum for the book without the map; while a copy with the map is now worth £20. Quaritch, Cat. 331, no. 1. The Boston Athenæum copy has the map. See Norton’s Lit. Gazette, new series, i. 272. Bull. Soc. Géog., Oct. 1858, p. 271.—Ed.]
He also produced here from the Rolls Office a memorandum of a license granted by the King to John Cabot alone, to take five English ships of two hundred tons or under, with necessary furniture, and mariners and subjects of the King as would willingly go with him,—dated the 3d day of February in the thirteenth year of his reign (1497/8).
The full copy of this license Hakluyt probably never saw, and the significance of this brief memorandum was never known until, two hundred and forty years afterwards, the entire document was found and published by Mr. Richard Biddle in his Memoir of Sebastian Cabot.[81] It was therefore often interpreted, in connection with the letters patent previously issued, as a grant to take up ships for the first voyage, which, as was supposed, did not take place till 1498.
The original grant of this license, of which Hakluyt publishes a brief memorandum, is found to be a permit to enlist ships and mariners, etc., “and them convey and lead to the land and isles of late found by the said John in our name and by our commandment. Paying for them and every of them as and if we should in or for our own cause pay, and none otherwise.”
The part I have italicized is most significant, and shows that a previous voyage had been made by John Cabot under the authority of the Crown.
Hakluyt also reprinted for the first time, in Latin, with an English version, an extract from Sebastian Cabot’s map, being no. 8 of the Legends inscribed upon it, relating to the discovery of North America, already recited on p. 21. And in saying that it was taken from Sebastian Cabot’s map, I should explain that Hakluyt says it was “an extract taken out of the map of Sebastian Cabot, cut by Clement Adams, ... which is to be seen in her Majesty’s Privy Gallery at Westminster, and in many other ancient merchants’ houses.” This language is a little equivocal, and some have supposed that Hakluyt intended to say that the extract simply was cut by Adams, and not that the whole map was copied by him. Clement Adams was a schoolmaster and a learned man, and probably was not an engraver. But Hakluyt is elsewhere more explicit. In his Westerne Planting,[82] he says: “His [Cabot’s] own map is in the Queen’s Privy Gallery at Westminster, the copy whereof was set out by Mr. Clement Adams, and is in many merchants’ houses in London.” It was probably reproduced under the inspection of Adams. We do not know the year in which Adams’s copy was made, unless an equivocal date in the margin of Purchas[83] may be regarded as expressing the year, namely “1549.” Purchas has fallen into great confusion in attempting to describe Cabot’s map and his picture as they hung in Whitehall in his time.[84]