[121] M. D’Avezac believed that Sebastian Cabot was born in 1472 or 1473, and that John Cabot and his family removed to England not far from the year 1477. He infers this last date from a conviction that John Cabot early engaged in maritime voyages from Bristol, and that the mention of a vessel sailing from that port in 1480, belonging to John Jay the younger, conducted by “the most skilful mariner in all England,” pointed to John Cabot as the real commander. And he thought he derived some support for this opinion from some passages in the letter of D’Ayala, the Spanish ambassador, mentioned farther on, in regard to voyages made from Bristol to the west for several years before the date of his letter. See Corry’s History of Bristol, i. 318, a work not accurate in relation to the Cabot voyages; cf. Botoner, alias William Wyrcestre, in Antiquities of Bristol, pp. 152, 153.
[122] Spanish Calendars, vol. i. no. 128.
[123] Strachey, in his Historie of Travaile into Virginia (written between the years 1612 and 1619), p. 6, says that John Cabot, to whom and to his three sons letters patents were granted by Henry VII. in 1496, was “idenized his subject, and dwelling within the Blackfriers,” etc.
[124] History and Antiquities of Bristol, 1789, p. 172.
[125] In vol. iv. of the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, now publishing, at p. 350, under the article Bristol, is the following:—
“This year (1497), on St. John’s the Baptist’s Day, the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristol called the ‘Matthew,’ the which said ship departed from the port of Bristow the 2d of May, and come home again 6th August following.”
Some of the dates are new. This statement is credited to an ancient manuscript “in possession of the Fust Family of Hill Court, Gloucestershire, the ‘collations’ of which are now, 1876, in the keeping of Mr. William George, bookseller, Bristol.”
This memorandum, containing the name of “America,” must have been written many years after the event described. Bristol manuscripts have been subjected to much suspicion. See an article in the English Notes and Queries, 2d series, vol. v. p. 154.
[126] Biddle’s Cabot, p. 80.
[127] Venetian Calendars, i. 262.