“8th April, 1504. To a preste (priest) that goeth to the New Island, 2l.”
“25th August, 1505. To Clays going to Richmond with wylde catts and popyngays of the Newfound Island; for his costs, 13s. 4d.”
“To Portugales” (Portuguese) “that brought popyngays and catts of the Mountaigne with other stuff to the King’s grace, 5l.”
How Sebastian Cabot was employed from 1498 to 1512.
No mention is made of Cabot in either of these patents, but as it is certain that he did not enter the service of Spain until the 13th of September, 1512, and as it is hardly possible to suppose that so active a mind would have remained unemployed during the intermediate period, it may therefore be presumed that for a portion at least of that time he was in some manner engaged on the coast of America. In confirmation of this opinion, the Calendars of Bristol of the year 1499 contain the following entry:—
“This yeare, Sebastian Cabot, borne in Bristoll, proferred his service to King Henry for discovering new countries; which had noe greate or favorable entertainment of the king, but he, with no extraordinary preparation, set forth from Bristoll, and made greate discoveries.”[59]
If Cabot was thus employed, the omission of any mention of his name in the patents of 1501 and 1502 is in some measure accounted for; and, in support of the Bristol records, it may be mentioned that Navarette, in describing from the records in the Spanish archives the voyage of Hojeda, who sailed from Spain on the 20th of May, 1499, says,[60] “What is certain is that Hojeda in his first voyage found certain Englishmen in the neighbourhood of Caquibaco.”
He enters the service of Spain, 1512.
When it is considered that Cabot did not enter a foreign service for many years after this period, and that he was the only man in England at that time fully competent to conduct an expedition to America, it is likely that the Englishmen Hojeda saw were no other than Sebastian Cabot himself with his exploring party. Having been stopped the year before by the failure of provisions while sailing southward, it is natural to suppose that he would in a new expedition resume his former search, till at length he reached that part of the coast where Hojeda met with the party of Englishmen, and where the “great discoveries” mentioned in the Bristol manuscript were no doubt made. It is, however, a remarkable fact that while the name of Amerigo Vespucci, the pilot who accompanied Hojeda, is now for ever associated with the whole of that vast continent, no headland, cape, or bay has preserved the memory of Sebastian Cabot. But the mysterious disappearance of his “maps and discourses,” which he had prepared for publication,[61] may account in a great measure for the name of Cabot having been unnoticed in connection with America, and may be adduced as a reason why doubts have so long existed as to his occupations between 1498 and 1512. Had these documents been preserved, they would assuredly have supplied abundant information on this point. Peter Martyr says,[62] that Cabot did not leave England until after the death of Henry VII., which occurred in 1509; and Herrera, the Historiographer of the king of Spain, records the additional fact that, in 1512, he entered the service of Ferdinand, who, anxious to secure the services of so distinguished a navigator, “gave him the title of his Captain, and a liberal allowance, and retained him in his service, directing that he should reside at Seville, to await orders.”[63]
No specific duties were, however, assigned to him beyond the general revision of the Spanish maps and charts then extant, till, in 1515, he became a member of the Council of the Indies, with the expectation of commanding in the following year another expedition for the discovery of a north-west passage to India.[64] But the death of Ferdinand put an end to this scheme, and the troubles which then ensued in Spain induced Cabot to return to England, where, shortly afterwards, he was appointed to prepare an expedition similar to that which Ferdinand, shortly before his death, had proposed. The result, however, of this further attempt in the same direction, in 1517, while it confirmed the opinion which had been formed of Cabot’s ardent love of enterprise and dauntless intrepidity, proving, as all other similar expeditions have done, a failure, though, in this instance, chiefly as it would seem from the cowardice of Cabot’s companion Sir Thomas Pert, retarded for a time any renewed efforts in that most forbidding, but favourite region of discovery. Then, and for years afterwards, many persons were so impressed with the idea that the rich lands of Cathay could be reached either by passage directly across the North Pole, or to the east or west of it, that it has been a subject of almost constant discussion; and the following extracts from a letter addressed by the intelligent Robert Thorne to Henry VIII. describe pretty accurately the opinions prevailing in his time:—[65]