Chapter XIII: The English in Maryland, 1632-1691 (6)

[11] Ziegler’s book is rare and curious; he was a geographer of great repute. Such books often serve to perpetuate references to more important works, and to show the erroneous geographical opinions of the period. A second edition, under a different title, was published at the same place in 1536. See Harrisse’s _Biblio. Amer. Vetus_, pp. 290, 291, 350, and the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pp. 106, 120, where will be found a notice of Ziegler. Biddle, p. 31.

[12] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 110.

[13] See _Année Véritable de la Naissance de Christophe Colomb_, p. 10, n. 8.

[14] See also _Relationi del S. Pietro Martira Milanese, Della cose notabili della provincia dell’ Egitto_, etc., by Carlo Passi, Venetia, 1564.

[15] In a recent letter from Mr. J. Carson Brevoort, the distinguished bibliographer and historical scholar, of Brooklyn, N. Y.,—who has kindly communicated for my use his abundant materials relating to the Cabots, and has laid me under great obligations for aid in preparing this paper,—he says he has been collating the first part of the _Summario_ of 1534 with the Latin _Decades_ of Peter Martyr, and he finds them to differ in a way that no mere translator would have ventured to effect; that in one instance two books of the Decades are condensed into a few lines, and the whole worked over as an author only could do it. The Italian Summary closes at the end of the ninth book of the third Decade. He thinks that Ramusio, with the edition of 1516 before him, would not have omitted the tenth book. Mr. Brevoort therefore is led to believe that Martyr himself rewrote in 1515, in Italian, the three Decades (the last book not having yet been written) and sent the MS. to a friend in Italy, where it slumbered until 1534, when it fell into the hands of Ramusio, who committed it to the press. This is a curious question in bibliography.

It should be added here that the statements of Martyr included in the Latin Decades of 1516 (afterward published in the entire work of 1530) are so often referred to by the author, in the course of his correspondence, that we are bound to accept that edition as the genuine work. It was published during his lifetime, and received his _imprimatur_.

[16] The figures of men and animals on the map are colored. I have recently received from my friend M. Letort, of the National Library in Paris, a more particular description of the legends of this map than has hitherto been published.

[17] It is supposed that a new edition of this map was published in 1549, the year after Sebastian Cabot returned to England. The only evidence of this is contained in a thick duodecimo volume first published in 1594, at Herborn, in Nassau, edited by Nathan Chytræus, entitled _Variorum in Europa Itinerum Deliciæ_,—a work consisting of monumental and other inscriptions, antique legends, and curious bits of antiquity in prose and verse, picked up by the diligent compiler in almost every country in Europe. He was in England in 1565; and apparently at Oxford he saw a document, “a geographical table,” under which he found several inscriptions in not very elegant Latin, which he copied and printed in his volume, filling twenty-two pages of the book. They are wholly in Latin, and correspond substantially with the Latin inscriptions on the Paris map described above. There is this difference. The inscriptions here are but nineteen in number, whereas on the Paris map there are twenty-two, five of them in Spanish only. No. xviii., of Chytræus, is in the body only of the map, and in Spanish; and No. xix. appears only in Spanish. In Chytræus each inscription has a title prefixed, wanting, as a rule, on the Paris map. There are some verbal variations in the text, owing probably to the contingencies of transcription and of printing. In the legend, No. xvii., which has the title, “Inscriptio sev titulus Auctoris,” the date 1549 is inserted as the year in which the map to which the inscriptions belonged was composed, instead of 1544, as in the Paris map.

[18] I copy here this legend entire, in the original Spanish as on the Paris map:—

“No. 8. Esta tierra fue descubierta por Ioan Caboto Veneciano, y Sebastian Caboto su hijo, anno del nascimiento de nuestro Saluador Iesu Christo de M.CCCC.XCIIII. a ueinte y quarto de Junio por la mannana, a la qual pusieron nôbre prima tierra uista, y a una isla grâde que esta par la dha tierra, le pusieron nōbre sant Ioan, por auer sido descubierta el mismo dia lagente della andan uestidos depieles de animales, usan en sus guerras arcos, y flechas, lancas, y dardos, y unas porras de palo, y hondas. Es tierra muy steril, ay enella muchos orsos plancos, y cieruos muy grâdes como cauallos, y otras muchas animales, y semeiantemête ay pescado infinito, sollos, salmōes, lenguados, muy grandes de uara enlargo y otras muchas diversidades de pescados, y la mayor multitud dellos se dizen baccallaos, y asi mismo ay en la dha tierra Halcones prietos como cueruos Aquillas, Perdices, Pardillas, y otras muchas aues de diuersas maneras.”

In the Latin inscription we read that the discovery was made “hora 5, sub diluculo;” that is, at the hour of five, at daybreak. The Spanish simply says that the discovery was made in the morning.

[19] [We give reduced a part of the North American coast. Other representations will be found in Stevens’s _Hist. and Geog. Notes_, pl. 4; Kohl’s _Discovery of Maine_, p. 358; Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les Marins du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle_, Paris, 1879, with an essay on the map,—papers originally printed in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, 1876; Nicholl’s _Life of S. Cabot_, but inaccurate in the names; _Hist. Mag._, March, 1868, in connection with Mr. Brevoort’s paper; F. Kidder’s _Discovery of North America by John Cabot_; Bryant and Gay’s _United States_, i. 193. Also in Augusto Zeri’s _Giovanni e. Sebastiano Caboto_, Estratto dalla Rivista Marittima, Marzo, Roma, 1881. The whole of the map is given, but on a much reduced scale, in Judge Daly’s _Early History of Cartography_, N. Y., 1879.—ED.]

[20] The following extract of a letter from Sebastian Cabot to the Emperor Charles V., dated London, Nov. 15, 1554, speaks of a sea-chart intended for his Majesty, and refers also to the subject of the variation of the needle, which interested Cabot in an especial manner:—

“With respect to laying down the position of the coast of Guinea conformably with the variation made by the needle with the pole, if the King of Portugal falls into an error, I give your Majesty a remedy.

“The same Francisco de Urista, whom I have named before, takes with him to show to your Majesty two figures which are: a mappe monde divided by the equator, from which your Majesty can see the causes of the variation of the needle, and the reasons why it moves at one time towards the north, at another towards the south pole; the second figure shows how to take the longitude on whatever parallel a man happens to be. The results of both these the said F. de U. will relate to your Majesty as I have here instructed him fully about them, and as he is himself skilled in the art of navigation. In regard to the sea-chart (?) which the said F. de U. has, I have written to your Majesty before about it, that it is of importance to your service, and also [have written] about a relation in my own handwriting to Juan Esquefe, your ambassador, to send it to your Majesty. From what I am told, it is in the possession of the Secretary Eraso. To it I refer you, and I assert that the chart will be of great service in reference to the division line agreed upon between the royal crown of Spain and Portugal for the reasons set forth in my relation.

“I beg you to receive my good will, etc. (Would come in person but am ill, etc.).”

(_Col. de Doc. Ined_. Madrid, 1843, iii. 512.) Andrés Garcia de Céspedes, in his _Regimiento de Navigation_, etc., 1606, speaking of the longitude, p. 137, probably alludes to this very map: “Sebastian Cabott de nacion Inglés, Pilóto bien conocido, in un Mapa que dio al Rey de Castilla,” etc.

[21] Cf. the learned dissertations on this map, by Dr. Kohl and M. D’Avezac, in _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 358-77, 506, 507; and Mr. Major’s review of the whole question in the _Archæologia_, xliii. 17-42, in 1870.

[Reference may also be made to D’Avezac’s paper in the _Bulletin de la Société de Géographie_, 4th ser., iv. 266; Asher’s appendix to his _Henry Hudson_, p. 260; and papers by Mr. Deane himself in _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1867, _Historical Magazine_, November, 1866, p. 353; and his note in Hakluyt’s _Westerne Planting_, p. 225. Cf. also Kohl’s _Descriptive Catalogue of those Maps relating to America, mentioned in Hakluyt’s Third Volume_, p. 11.—ED.]

[22] The geographical designation here employed has been thought by some to be very indefinite, inasmuch as the Spaniards, who discovered Florida, subsequently gave that name to the whole country northward and westward of the territory now bearing that name; but it must be remembered that that designation was not accepted by geographers of other nations. After the voyages of Verrazano and Cartier the name “La Nouvelle France” was applied by French geographers to the territory as far down as 40° N., and the name was sometimes applied to the whole of North America. The maps of the Italian geographer, Gastaldi, who made maps for Ramusio’s third volume, and of Ruscelli, his pupil, confined Florida to more southern limits; and so did Sebastian Cabot himself, if the map of 1544 was made by him. Indeed, in the conversation of these Italian _savans_ at the house of Fracastor, that geographical status was assumed; that is to say, the country of Cabot’s landfall, and the land by which he sailed north and south, was not understood to be Florida, for the statement is that “he sailed down the coast by that land toward the equinoctial, and came to that part of this firm land which is now called Florida.” Of course the point which he reached is very indefinite. Peter Martyr had said, thirty-five years before, that Cabot told him that he went south _almost_ to the latitude of the strait of Gibraltar, which is in 36° N. Nobody knows whether these two accounts relate to the same voyage. That to which the conversation refers is assumed by the narrator to be the voyage of discovery. Indeed, for two hundred years and more there was no suspicion that a voyage by the Cabots followed immediately the voyage of discovery; though some incidents are related which may have taken place in a subsequent voyage, and others which never took place at all. Modern critics, who accept the above story as to the latitude reached at the south, generally agree that it was only on the second voyage that this was accomplished.

[23] The conversation at Caphi, at the house of Fracastor, who was a friend of Ramusio, took place a short time only before its publication. Ramusio says, in his report, “a few months ago.” We do not know precisely when he wrote his report, but there is a reference in it to a book of Jacob Tevius, published in 1548. As I have said above, we do not know the year of the interview with Cabot at Seville. The narrator says that it was “some years ago,” and I should infer that it was some years after Cabot’s return in August, 1530, from the La Plata expedition, to which Cabot in the interview refers. He also mentions that he is growing old, and retiring from active duties. In 1540 he would probably have been approaching seventy years of age, and this date may safely be assumed as not far from the time when the conversation took place. M. D’Avezac, in _Revue Crit._, v. 265, gives 1544 or 1545 as the probable date.

To the publication of this report relating to Cabot, Hakluyt, in 1589, prefixed the name of Galeacius Butrigarius, the Pope’s legate in Spain, as the distinguished person who reported the conversation with Cabot; and ever since that time, down to the publication of Biddle’s _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, in 1831, the statement passed without question. Biddle, who regarded the matter as of little moment, said there was no authority for that name in Ramusio, who says himself that he withholds it from motives of delicacy; but Biddle did not say, perhaps he did not observe, that Hakluyt got the name from Eden (_Decades_, _f._ 252, _verso_), who made the original blunder. Martyr, in the beginning of his second Decade, written in 1515, speaks of knowing Butrigarius of Bologna, when the latter was of the Pope’s embassy in Spain; and I find that he died in 1518, in the forty-third year of his age (see Zedler’s _Universal Lexikon_, v. 4, Halle, 1733). M. D’Avezac had noted, as early as 1869, that Butrigarius had died thirty years before the conversation took place at the house of Fracastor, and also that the editor of Ramusio, Tomaso Giunti, had added the word Mantuan to this anonymous person’s name; and now, through the researches instituted by Charles Bullo and by the mediation of the superintendent of the archives of the state at Venice, it is ascertained that this unknown person was Gian Giacomo Bardolo, of Mantua. See _Intorno a Giovanni Caboto_, etc., by Cornelio Desimoni, Genova, 1881, pp. 26, 27; also, in _Atti_, vol. xv., of the Società ligure di storia patria.

[24] Fracastor died Aug. 8, 1553, over seventy years of age. He was a maker of globes. Humphrey Gilbert says that he was a traveller in the northern parts of America. (Kohl, p. 229; Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602).

[25] Ramusio, ii. 4; Hakluyt, 1589, p. 513.

[26] Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602.

[27] Eden’s _Decades_, fol. 318, corrected by the original. [The first edition of Gomara is a rare book, and a copy has been lately priced by Quaritch at £36. It proved to be one of the most popular of all the books of that century on the New World; and, as we count, including varieties of titles, there were more than a score of editions in fifty years, so that his statements became widely known. There were seven such issues in Spanish, either in Spain or in Flanders, in two years, when the demand for it seems to have failed in its original tongue, and was transferred to Italy, where at Rome and Venice there were six editions in twenty years (1556 to 1576). Sabin says eighteen in that interval, but I fail to find them. There was a seventh near the end of the century (1599). In 1568 or 1569 there seem to have been three issues of the first French translation, and six others followed, from 1577 to 1597. These statements are based chiefly on the lists of editions given in Sabin, vii. 306 (said to have been drawn up by Mr. Brevoort); in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 169; and Leclerc’s _Bibliotheca Americana_, No. 143.—ED.]

[28] [See a later Editorial note on “The earliest English publications on America.”—ED.]

[29] _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 206.

[30] _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_, 110-119.

[31] Vol. iii. p. 4, 1556.

[32] _Divers Voyages_, Hakluyt Soc., pp. 50, 51.

[33] _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 208-210.

[34] Mr. Brevoort has submitted some notes to my attention, on this voyage. Rejecting the year 1516-17 as impracticable, he adopts an earlier date, before Cabot had left England, and finds some authority for it in a book of George Beste, London, 1578, on the three voyages of Frobisher, hereafter to be mentioned. The writer there gives 1508 as the year of Sebastian Cabot’s discovery of North America, probably never having heard of any previous voyages. Mr. Brevoort thinks he had authority for a voyage of Cabot about the year named. Thomas Pert, or Spert, against whom the charge of “faint heart” is alleged by Eden, is mentioned in vol. i. of _Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII._, 1512, C. 1514, as master of the “Mary Rose,” and of the “Great Harry.” In 1514 he is pensioned, and in 1517 is placed on shore duty. There is no report of him in 1516, but as he was a veteran in 1514 it is hardly probable that he would have been on a voyage of discovery in 1516. He is usually mentioned as Thomas Spert; only once is he called Pert. As evidence that an expedition left England on a voyage of discovery some time during the last years of Henry VII., or during the early years of his successor, the _Interlude of the Four Elements_, of uncertain date, but probably written before 1519, cited above, is adduced as showing that the incident related occurred “not long ago.” And certain verses which speak of the disobedience of the mariners, which put an end to the voyage, and to the hopes of the projector, afford the earliest reference to the mutiny story. Mr. Brevoort is of opinion that Eden’s vague reference to an event occurring in the reign of Henry VIII., “about the same year of his reign,” was intended to place it in the 8th year of the century. But that would bring it within the reign of Henry VII.

[35] _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 62-66.

[36] Dedication of the book, folios 1, 2; _Biddle_, pp. 64, 65.

[37] Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_, 1582.

[38] He printed it on folios 316, and 317 of his _Decades_. See the inscription in Latin in a work already cited, by Nathan Chytræus, pp. 779-781.

[39] See vol. iii, 807, and iv. 1812. See _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, ii. 224.

[40] Appendix to his _Mem. of Sebastian Cabot_. Mr. Biddle is said to have paid £500 for the picture.

[41] See their _Proceedings_, ii. 101. 111.

[42] No. 103 in the Catalogue of its gallery. A copy of this picture, painted in the year 1763, now hangs in the Sala della Scudo, in the ducal palace in Venice, with a long Latin inscription composed probably at the time the copy was made. _Notes and Queries_, 2d ser. vol. v. p. 2.

[43] See _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ Jan. 1865, pp. 91-96. _Hist. Mag._ Nov. 1869, pp. 306, 307.

[44] See the Appendix to the _Historical View of the progress of Discovery on the more Northern Coasts of America_, by Patrick Fraser Tytler, Esq.

[45] _Examen Crit._ iv. 232.

[46] iv. 1177.

[47] I might mention here that an English version of this book, made by Thomas Hacket, was published in England in 1568, dedicated to Sir Henry Sidney. The passage in question occurs in fol. 122 H. C. _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 241. [This version is perhaps rarer than the two French editions (Paris and Anvers) of 1558, and the Italian of 1561, and is worth ten guineas or thereabout. A recent French catalogue prices the original Paris edition at about the same sum. It has been recently, 1878, reprinted in Paris with notes by Paul Gaffarel.—ED.]

[48] _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, p. 89.

[49] See _La Historia General de las Indias_, 1554, cap. xxxix, fol. 31.

[50] [_Huth Catalogue_, ii. 572, _Brinley Catalogue_, i. no. 29. This translation is also contained in J. S. Clarke’s _Progress of Maritime Discovery_, London, 1803, Appendix. The _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, i. 224, says an English translation was printed in the _Oxford Collection of Voyages_, ii.—ED.]

[51] Pages 87, 88.

[52] Or inlet.

[53] Under the year 1526 Galvano says: “In the year 1526 there went out of Sevill one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian, being chief Pilote to the emperor,” etc. There is added to the old English version, not in the Portuguese text, after “a Venetian,”—“by his father, but born at Bristol in England.” Hakluyt Society’s volume, p. 169.

[54] Mr. J. Winter Jones, the editor of the _Divers Voyages_ for the Hakluyt Society, says, concerning the original French edition of this work, that it “is not known to exist, and it is doubtful if it ever was printed.” Hakluyt, however, in his “Discourse on Westerne Planting,” published as vol. ii., _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, p. 20, says it is “extant in print, both in French and English”. [Sparks, in his _Life of Ribault_, p. 147, says that he cannot find that the original French was ever published; but Gaffarel, _Floride Francaise_, says it was published in London, 1563, as _Histoire de l’Expédition Francaise en Floride_, and soon became scarce.—ED.]

[55] Hakluyt Society’s _Divers Voyages_, p. 92.

[56] As the language of Hacket’s English version of Ribault was accessible to me only through Richard Hakluyt’s _Divers Voyages_, 1582, in which he reprinted it, I had an ungenerous suspicion that he might have substituted that date for another, he having placed the year 1498 in the margin of the page on which he first prints the alleged extract from Fabian. The only known copy of Hacket’s translation is in the British Museum, and on an appeal to that, through a transcript of it taken for Mr. John Carter-Brown, I find Ribault’s date to be 1498. [Hacket’s version as given by Hakluyt is also reprinted in B. F. French’s _Hist. Coll. of Louisiana and Florida_, ii. 159.—ED.]

[57] [Ortelius was not far from thirty years old, when Sebastian Cabot died. He had been in England, and possibly had seen the old navigator. Felix Van Hulst’s account of Ortelius was published in a second edition at Liege in 1846. Ortelius was the first to collect contemporary maps and combine them into a collection, which became the precursor of the modern atlas. His learning and integrity, with a discrimination that kept his judgment careful, has made his book valuable as a trustworthy record of the best geographical knowledge of his time. His position at Antwerp was favorable for broadening his research, and a disposition to better each succeeding issue, in which he was not hampered by deficiency of pecuniary resources, served to spread his work widely. The first Latin edition of 1570 was followed by others in that language, and in Dutch, German, French, and Italian, with an ever-increasing number of maps, and recasting of old ones. These editions, including epitomes, numbered at least twenty-six, down to 1606, when it was for the first time put into English, followed by an epitome in the same language, with smaller maps, in 1610. There were a few editions on the continent during the rest of that century (the latest we note is an Italian one in 1697), but other geographers with their new knowledge were then filling the field.—ED.]

[58] See Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 56.

[59] _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, p. 255.

[60] _The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher_, Hakluyt Soc. 1867, p. 22. [This putting forth of energy by the English at this time in pursuit of maritime discovery is reflected in the larger production of the English press in this direction, as shown in a later Editorial note.—ED.]

[61] Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 291.

[62] Vol. iii, p. 4.

[63] See also Hakluyt, 1589, p. 602.

[64] Richard Eden died about this time, perhaps in the previous year. He left among his papers a translation, made “in the year of our Lord, 1576,” and from the Latin of Lewis Vartomannus, which Willes includes in his own edition. The last book published by Eden was an English translation from the Latin of a book on navigation, by Joannes Taisnierus, public professor in Rome and of several universities in Italy. It bears no date, but it is supposed to have been issued in 1576 or 1577. See _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pt. 1. p. 262, which puts its date 1576; but it is given 1579 in Markham’s _Davis’s Voyages_. In the Epistle Dedicatory, Eden speaks of attending “the good old man,” Sebastian Cabot, “on his death-bed,” and listening to his flighty utterances about a divine revelation of a new method for finding the longitude. See Biddle, pp. 222, 223. Eden was also engaged in other literary enterprises not mentioned by me.

[65] Willes’s _History of Travayle_, etc., fol. 232, 233; Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 292; Hakluyt, 1589, pp. 610-616.

[66] Kohl, p. 364.

[67] I quote from Biddle’s _Cabot_, p. 27; but Brunet, iii. 1945, and _Supplement_, i. 1129, notice an edition in 1575, 3 vol. folio. See also Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Historica_, 1870. p. 121.

[68] Tom. ii. p. 2175.

[69] Biddle, p. 28.

[70] [See _Carter-Brown Catalogue_, pt. i. p. 292, which shows there were two editions the same year. The book is rare, and was priced by Leclerc in 1878 at 650 francs. Stevens, _Hist. Coll._ i. 135, says he has seen but two copies of the map which should accompany the book. This is a folded woodcut, which in the main is a reduced copy of the map in Ortelius’s first edition. The map is in the Harvard College copy. The _Huth Catalogue_, iv. 1169, shows the map.—ED.]

[71] Hakluyt, in a _Discourse on Westerne Planting_, written in 1584, which was printed for the first time by the Maine Hist. Soc. in 1877, cites this book of Popellinière, and gives an English version from it of the conversation in Ramusio. Hakluyt is here asserting the Queen of England’s title to all the territory “from Florida to the Circle Arctic,” and he enlarges upon the exploits of Sebastian Cabot, on which the claim of England is based.

[72] _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 42-47.

[73] [They were subsequently reprinted in Rymer’s _Fœdera_, in Chalmers’s and Hazard’s _Hist. Coll._ and in the Hakluyt Society’s ed. of the _Divers Voyages_.—ED.]

[74] In the _Proceedings_ of the American Antiquarian Society for October, 1881, Mr. George Dexter has traced the publication of this alleged extract from Fabian to an earlier date than had usually been assigned to it. It was published by Stow, in his _Annals_, in 1580, together with the paragraph relating to the savage men said to have been brought home by Sebastian Cabot, and also printed by Hakluyt in 1582. They were also printed in the second edition of Holinshed, 1586-87. The Cotton manuscript, Vitellius, A. xvi., has been re-examined, and proves not to be a Fabian. Mr. Dexter has printed the two extracts from it, the latter, relating to the “savage men,” for the first time. In the Cotton collection, Nero, C. xi., is a genuine Fabian, but it contains nothing about Cabot. The conclusion to which I have arrived from this examination by Mr. Dexter is, that the Vitellius manuscript was not the original used by Stow and Hakluyt. They give facts and details not to be found in that manuscript; and this remark will particularly apply to the extract relating to the three savage men, which in the Vitellius is brief and meagre. Both Stow and Hakluyt must have used a genuine Fabian manuscript yet to be discovered. For though neither would probably hesitate to add or change a name or a date, if he thought he had sufficient authority for so doing, they would not manufacture a narrative.

As regards the savage men referred to, Stow, under the date of 1502, says they were that year presented to the King, yet that they were brought over by Sebastian Cabot in 1498, giving Fabian as his authority. Hakluyt, in his quarto of 1582, repeats the same story, on the same authority; yet in his folio of 1589 he changes the date in his heading as to the year of their presentation to the King, making it conform to the year in which they were brought over. Mr. Biddle (_Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 230, 231) has a labored argument to show that the men were not brought over by Cabot, but by some one else, in the year they were presented to the King, 1502, reflecting severely on Hakluyt for changing this last date. It is not at all probable that the name of either John Cabot or Sebastian Cabot was given in the original manuscript used by Stow and Hakluyt. I will add that George Beste, in his work on the voyages of Frobisher, cited above, says that Sebastian Cabot brought home “sundry of the people” of the country he visited, “and many other things, in token of possession taken,” very oddly assigning the voyage, which he regarded as the voyage of discovery, to the year 1508.

[75] I had called attention to this fact in some notes on Cabot’s map in the _Proceedings_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867, and Dr. Kohl, p. 371, says that Locke is supposed to have copied the inscription from a map of Cabot in England. The fact must have been inscribed on some other map of Cabot than the recently recovered one in Paris, for that certainly does not bear out the conjecture.

[76] Hakluyt, 1589, p. 680.

[77] Hakluyt, iii. 173.

[78] In the year 1584 Richard Hakluyt, at the request of Sir Walter Raleigh, wrote a _Discourse on Westerne Planting_,—to which I have already made a brief reference,—supposed to embody the opinions of the statesmen of England at that period on the colonization of North America. It is a remarkable paper, intended for the eye of the Queen. After giving all the reasons why England should enter upon this work speedily, he presents, in chapter xviii. “the Queen of England’s title to all the West Indies, or at least to as much as is from Florida to the circle Arctic,” as being “more lawful and right than the Spaniards’, or any other Christian princes’;” and the claim is based mainly on the discovery by Sebastian Cabot, in the year 1496, as related in the first volume of Ramusio, which is cited. Hakluyt is anxious to make it appear that Cabot discovered North America before Columbus discovered the firm land of the Indies; yea, more than a year before, and he recurs more than once to this date as showing the fact. Indeed, he once goes so far as to cite the date on Clement Adams’s map, 1494, as carrying the claim yet farther back. [The history of this manuscript, published as vol. ii. of the _Documentary History of Maine_, is traced in an Editorial note to Dr. De Costa’s chapter.—ED.]

[79] _Memoir of S. Cabot_, pp. 30, 178-180.

[80] _Ibid._ p. 31.

[81] This book of Mr. Biddle was published in London in two editions, 1831 and 1832, and in the United States, 1831, all without the name of the author, an eminent jurist and statesman of Pittsburg, Penn., who was born in 1795, and died in 1847. It is a work of great value for its authorities, and displays much critical talent; and though composed with little system and with a strong bias in favor of Sebastian Cabot, whom the author makes his hero, it may be regarded as the best review of the history of maritime discovery relating to the period of which he treats, that had appeared.

[The most important notice of Mr. Biddle’s book occurred in Tytler’s _Historical View of the Progress of Discovery on the more Northern Coasts of America_, Biddle’s reflections upon Hakluyt being the particular occasion of a vindication of that collector. George S. Hillard also reviewed Biddle in the _North American Review_, xxxiv. 405, and it elicited other essays in contemporary journals. It supplied largely the material for Hayward’s _Life of Cabot_ in Sparks’s _American Biography_. The most recent treatment of the subject is in a condensed and somewhat enthusiastic _Remarkable Life, Adventures and Discoveries of Sebastian Cabot_, by J. F. Nicholls, the public librarian of Bristol, London, 1869. This writer ascribes the chief glory to Sebastian and not to the father, and rather grandly lauds his achievements. This provoked Henry Stevens to putting a note in his _Bibliotheca Historica_, 1870, no. 2519, in vindication of John Cabot’s greater claim,—a view he again emphasized in a little tract, with the expressive mathematical title, _Sebastian Cabot-John Cabot = O_: Boston, 1870. Some of the later information has been embodied by Bancroft in a paper on Cabot in the _New American Cyclopædia_, which he has used again in vol. i. of his Centenary Ed. _History of the United States_. A very good resumé of existing knowledge as it stood forty-five years ago, is given in Conway Robinson’s _Discoveries in the West and Voyages along the Atlantic Coast_, Richmond, 1848. A somewhat similar treatment is given in Peschel’s _Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, book ii., ch. 6, and notice may also be taken of the same author’s _Geschichte der Erdkunde_, vol. iv. Fox Bourne, in his _English Seamen under the Tudors_, gives a summary of the Cabots’ career as explorers, and in his _English Merchants_ he treats of their relation to British commerce and the enterprise of Bristol. Mr. Travers Twiss communicated some papers on the relative influence of Columbus and Cabot on American Discovery to the _Nautical Magazine_, July and August, 1876; and a review of a somewhat similar kind will be found in Admiral Jurien de la Gravière’s _Les Marins du xv^e et xvi^e Siècles_, composed of papers which had originally appeared in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, 1876, _et seq._ Among other views, reference may be made to F. von Hellward’s _Sebastian Cabot_, 43 pp.; Malte-Brun’s _Annales des Voyages_, xcix., p. 39.—ED.]

[82] Page 126.

[83] Vol. iii. p. 807.

[84] See D’Avezac in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, Quar. Ser., xvi. 272, 273.

[85] [The titles of these works in full, with some further account of the instrumentality of Hakluyt in advancing discovery, are given in Dr. De Costa’s chapter on “Norumbega,” and in the notes accompanying it.—ED.]

[86] M. D’Avezac, in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, Quar. Ser., xiv., 271, 272, 1857, and Dr. Asher in his _Henry Hudson_ (Hakluyt Soc.), pp. lxviii, 261, 1860, both express the opinion that Clement Adams deliberately altered the date from 1494 to 1497, the latter being the date copied by Hakluyt into his extract from Adams’s map, as published in the third volume of his fol. of 1600; neither of these writers being aware of the fact that in Hakluyt’s first citation from Adams’s map, in his folio of 1589, the date 1494 was given. All we know of Adams’s map is derived from Hakluyt; and as an additional evidence that the extract cited from it bore the date 1494, we have Hakluyt’s previous statement, in his _Discourse on Westerne Planting_, cited above, where this fact is clearly affirmed.

In the _Proceedings_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867, I called attention, in some notes on Cabot’s map, to the inadvertences of these distinguished historians; and, in a later paper by M. D’Avezac, printed in the _Bulletin de la Soc. Géog._, in Paris for 1869, and translated in the _Doc. Hist. of Maine_, i. 506, 507, he revises his opinion, and affirms his belief that the change of date from 1494, in Hakluyt’s first folio, to 1497 in that of 1600 was caused by a typographical error. [D’Avezac’s paper was entitled: _Les navigations Terre-neuviennes de Jean et Sébastien Cabot—Lettre au Révérend Leonard Woods_: and was also printed separately in Paris.—ED.]

[87] [See the note on Molyneaux’s map, with a sketch of it, appended to the chapter on “Norumbega.”—ED.]

[88] It has been suggested that Hakluyt had access to Cabot’s papers in possession of William Worthington, and that they revealed the true date. It is a pity he did not “make note of it” among his authorities. See R. H. Major’s _True Date of the English Discovery_, etc., London, 1870, originally printed in the _Archæologia_, xliii, 17.

The mention of the name of William Worthington, against whom Mr. Biddle has emphasized a suspicion of unjust dealing with Sebastian Cabot, reminds me of a remark of M. D’Avezac in speaking of the marriage of Cabot to Catherine Medrano,—that he suspected that Worthington, instead of being hostile to Cabot, was, on the contrary, bound to him by family ties. See _Revue Critique_, v. 268, 269.

[89] Page 511.

[90] Page 128.

[91] Mr. Major concludes his paper by producing incontestable evidence from the recently published Venetian and Spanish Calendars, to be adduced farther on, that the true date of discovery was 1497.

[92] See a more full analysis of this subject in _Proceedings_ of the Am. Antiq. Soc. for April, 1867.

[93] See vol. i. 226, 274; ii. 243, 267; iii. 10; cf. Biddle, 184-187, 311, who doubts as to Cabot’s appointment as “grand pilot,” as asserted by Hakluyt. [Davis, in his _World’s Hydrographical Descriptions_, does not give him any official title in 1595. “Sebastian Gabota, an expert pilot, and a man reported of speciall judgment, who being that wayes imployed returned without successe.” _Davis’s Voyages_ (Hakluyt Soc.), p. 195.—ED.]

[94] The Legend no. xvii. of the map is copied from Chytræus into the text of the _Tabularum Geog. Contractatrum_ of Peter Bertius, published in Latin and in French. In the Latin edition of 1602 or 1603, the second edition, the Legend is given on page 627, and in the French of 1617 on page 777. The text is ascribed to Jodocus Hondius, who died in 1612, says Lelewel, in his _Géographie du Moyen Age_. (_Letter of J. Carson Brevoort._)

[95] Among the many works whose publication was inspired by Hakluyt, was the issue in 1612 of an English version of the eight _Decades_ of Peter Martyr, translated by Michael Locke, thus laying before the English reader whatever that industrious chronicler had written concerning Sebastian Cabot. The first three Decades, as we have already seen, had been translated by Richard Eden, many years before, and those were now adopted by Locke into his completed version; the work was entitled _De Novo Orbe, or the History of the West Indies_, etc., London, 1612. It contained a Latin dedication to Sir Julius Cæsar, and an address in English to the reader. The same sheets were also issued with another titlepage without date, and omitting the Latin dedication, and also again in 1628 with a new title, calling the book a second edition. [Copies of either issue are worth from £5 to £10, and even more. Fifty years ago Rich (1832, no. 130) priced one at £1 16_s._ The text was reprinted in the supplement to the 1809 edition of Hakluyt.—ED.]

Purchas has several notices of the Cabots taken from Hakluyt principally, hereafter the great authority cited, and from Ramusio. His is the earliest mention made, within my knowledge, of Sebastian Cabot’s picture in Whitehall gallery, but he speaks of it as though it were displayed on Clement Adams’s map hanging there. He probably never took the trouble to visit the gallery himself, but wrote from wrong information.

[Purchas’s _Pilgrimage_ gave his own form and language to the accounts of the voyages which he collected, and those in his eighth and ninth book concern America. It was published in 1613, when he was thirty-six years old. There was a second edition in 1614, and a third with additions in 1617, the year after Purchas inherited Hakluyt’s manuscripts. He now set about his greater work,—_Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas, his Pilgrimes_,—in which he changed his method, and preserved the language of the narratives, which he brought together. This was published in four volumes (part of the third and all of the fourth volume pertaining to America), in 1625; and the next year a new edition of his first work was brought out, which has ever since constituted the fifth volume of the entire work. The set has nearly or quite quadrupled in value during the last fifty and sixty years, and superior copies are now worth £100; such a copy however must contain the original engraved frontispiece with its little map of the world, which is seldom found, and “Hondius his Map of the World,” which is rarer still, on page 95, where ordinary copies show a reduplication merely of the map properly belonging on page 115. Mr. Deane owns Thomas Prince’s copy of the American portions, which are enriched with Prince’s notes. Samuel Sewall’s copy is in Harvard College Library. Purchas survived the publication but two years, and died in 1628. His service to the cause in which he and Hakluyt were so conspicuous workers, was great, but is not generally accounted as equal to that of the elder chronicler. See Clarke’s _Maritime Discovery_, i. xiii., and the references in Allibone’s _Dictionary_. Bohn’s Lowndes p. 2010, is useful in determining the collation, which is confused.—ED.]

Bacon, in his _Life of Henry VII._ published in 1622, notices the voyage of Sebastian Cabot, in which North America was discovered; but mentioning no year implies that it took place in 1498. His principal authority seems to have been Stowe’s _Chronicle_.

A valuable work was published at Madrid in 1629, by Pinello D. Ant. de Leon, entitled an _Epitome de la bibliotheca oriental i occidental, nautica i geographica_, etc. of which a second edition, edited by De Barcia, was published in 1737-38. Particular mention is made in it of the several editions of the writings of Peter Martyr, though the information is not always correct. He says that Juan Pablo Martyr Rizo, a descendant of Peter Martyr, had a manuscript translation in Spanish of the Decades for printing, which we may well believe never appeared.

[96] In the _Foreign and Domestic Calendars of Henry VIII._, ii. pt. ii. p. 1576, Sebastian Talbot (Cabot) is named as receiving twenty shillings, in May, 1512, “for making a card of Gascoigne and Guyon.” He left soon after for Spain.

[97] Dec. i. p. 254, Madrid, 1730; Biddle, p. 98.

[98] Navarrete, _Historica Nautica_, p. 138.

[99] Page 119.

[100] D’Avezac, in _Revue Critique_, v. 265.

[101] Herrera, Dec. ii. p. 18.

[102] Navarrete, _Coll._ iii. 319.

[103] Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, tome ii. pp. 697-700; Herrera, Dec. ii. p. 70; _Venetian Calendar_, vol. ii. no. 607.

[104] Herrera, Dec. ii. p. 226; Cf. Biddle, p. 121.

[105] Gomara, cap. xcix. Navarrete, _Coll._ iv. 339; _Bibl. Maritima_, as above. Cf. Biddle, pp. 122, 123.

[106] Biddle’s _Cabot_, pp. 123-128, where will be found a good summary of these events, with the original authorities cited; with which cf. Peter Martyr, Dec. vii. cap. 6; Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, as above.

[107] _Bibl. Maritima_, as above.

[108] Navarrete, _Bibl. Maritima_, ii. 697-700; Ibid. _Coll._ v. 333; Herrera, Dec. iv. pp. 168, 169, 214; D’Avezac, _Bulletin Soc. Géog._ Quart. Ser. xiv. 268.

[109] Navarrete, _Nautica_, pp. 135, 136, 155.

[110] _Viage del Sutil y Mexicana_, in 1792; Madrid, 1802, Introduction (by Don M. F. Navarrete, then a young man), p. xlii.

[111] Oviedo, _Historia general y natural de las Indias_, ii. p. 169, 1852.

[112] In a notice of the settlement of the estate of Sir Thomas Lovell, who died May 25, 1524, among the debts unpaid and now, February 18, discharged, was one to John Goderyk of Cornwall, draper, for conducting Sebastyan Cabot, master of the pilots in Spain, to London, at testator’s request, 43_s._ 4_d._—_Letters and Papers_, Henry VIII., vol. iv. pt. i. p. 154.

[113] _Venetian Calendars_, vol. iii., nos. 557, 558, 589, 607, 634, 669, 670, 710, 1115; V. 711; _Foreign_, under date Sept. 12, 1551; Hardy’s _Report upon Venetian Calendars_, pp. 7, 8.

[114] Strype, _Eccl. Mem_. Oxford, 1822, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 296; Harleian MSS., quoted by Biddle, p. 175, where the story is told in a letter dated April 21, 1550, from the Council to Sir Philip Hoby, resident minister in Flanders. Bancroft, _American Cyclopædia_, iii. 530.

[115] Biddle, pp. 187, 217, 219; Rymer’s _Fœdera_, xv. 427, 466; Bancroft, as above.

[116] [It is well known that in commemoration of the English discovery, _Cabotia_ a has been urged as a name for North America; but if _Sebastia_, urged by William Doyle in his _Acc. of the British Dominion beyond the Atlantic_, 1770, had been adopted, we should have had a misapplication, quite mating the mishap which gave the name of America to the western hemisphere.—ED.]

[117] _Venetian Calendars_, vol. i. no. 453; D’Avezac, _Doc. Hist. Maine_, i. 504, 505; S. Romanin, _Storia Documentata_, iv. 453.

[118] Mr. J. F. Nichols, in his _Life of Sebastian Cabot_, pp. 20, 21, appears to misapprehend the terms of this privilege of naturalization, supposing it was a grant of citizenship for fifteen years to come, and not on account of fifteen years’ residence already passed. The memorandum reads: “Quod fiat privilegium civilitatis de intus et extra Joani Caboto per habitationem annorum xv. juxta consuetum,”—“That a privilege of citizenship, within and without, be made for John Cabot, as usual, _on account_ of a residence of fifteen years.” That such is the proper interpretation of the grant is shown by the full document itself, issued four years previously to another person, and referred to in the Register, where the privilege to John Cabot is recorded. The document recites that “Whereas, whoever shall have dwelt continuously in Venice _for a space of fifteen years or more_, spending that time in performing the duties of our kingdom, shall be our citizen and Venetian, and shall enjoy the privilege of citizenship and other benefits,” etc. Then follows the statement that the person applying had offered satisfactory proofs that he _had dwelt continuously in Venice for fifteen years_, and had faithfully performed the other duties required, and he was thereupon declared to be a Venetian and citizen, within and without, etc. (See _Intorno a Giovanni Caboto_, etc., by Cornelio Desimoni, Genova, 1881, pp. 43-45.)

[119] Ramusio, i. 374.

[120] _Decades_, f. 255.

[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.

[128] _Venetian Calendars_, i. 260. These papers were for the first time printed in America by the American Antiquarian Society, in their _Proceedings_ for October, 1866, in an interesting communication from the Rev. Edward E. Hale, D.D., principally relating to the Cabot voyages. [Mr. Rawdon Brown, who calendared these papers, made his discoveries the subject of a paper on the Cabots in the Philobiblion Society’s _Collections_, ii. 1856; and in the preface to the first volume of the _Venetian Calendars_, A.D. 1202 to 1509, he describes the archives at Venice, which yield these early evidences. The late Professor Eugenio Albèri edited at Florence _Le Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato durante il Seclo_ xvi^o, in fifteen volumes, which contain numerous reports of English transactions at that time.—ED.]

[129] And is copied by Cornelio Desimoni, in his _Giovanni Caboto_, Genoa, 1881.

[130] “John Cabot’s Voyage of 1497,” in _Hist. Mag._ xiii. 131 (March, 1868), with a section of the Cabot (Paris) map. See also “The Discovery of North America by John Cabot in 1497,” by Mr. Frederic Kidder, in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ (Oct. 1878), xxxii. 381 [who reproduces also a part of the same map, and gives a sketch-map marking Cabot’s track around the Gulf. He bases his argument partly on Pasqualigo’s statement that Cabot found the tides “slack,” and shows that the difference in their rise and fall in that region is small compared with what Cabot had been used to, at Bristol. In the confusion of the two Cabot voyages, which for a long while prevailed (see an instance in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ x. 383, under date, 1663), the track of his first voyage is often made to extend down the eastern seaboard of the present United States, and it is thus laid down on the map in Zurla’s _Di Marco Polo e degli viaggiatori Veneziani_, Venezia, 1818. Stevens, _Hist. and Geog. Notes_, does not allow that on either voyage the coast south of the St. Lawrence was seen; and urges that for some years the coast-line farther south was drawn from Marco Polo’s Asiatic coasts; and he contends for the “honesty” of the Portuguese Portolano of 1514, which leaves the coast from Nova Scotia to Charleston a blank, holding that this confirms his view. It may be a question whether it was honesty or ignorance. Dr. Hale, _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._ Oct. 21, 1871, gives a sketch-map to show the curious correspondence of the Asian and American coast lines. Observe it also in the Finæus map, already given.—ED.]

[131] I am indebted to Professor Franklin B. Dexter, of Yale College, for the privilege of using this paper, copied by him from the collection of Privy Seals, no. 40, in her Majesty’s Public Record Office in London. Other valuable memoranda, including a copy of the renewal to Sebastian Cabot, in 1550, of the patent of 1495/6, were also generously placed in my hands by Professor Dexter.

[132] Of course, neither John Cabot nor Sebastian could furnish ships at his own charge, any more than Columbus could. Raimondo says that John was “poor,” and the acceptance by him of small gifts from the King proves it. He was probably aided by the wealthy men of Bristol, with whom he may have taken up a credit.

Among the Privy Purse expenses under date of 22d March and 1st April, 1498, are sums of money, £20, £20, £30, £2, paid to several persons in the way of loan, or of reward, for their “going towards the new isle.” Three of these payments were to Lanslot Thirkill, of London, who appears to have been an owner or master of a ship. (Biddle, p. 86.)

[133] _Calendar of Spanish State Papers_, i. 176-77. [This letter was discovered by Bergenroth in 1860, the document being preserved at Simancas. See also Bergenroth’s _Memoirs_, p. 77, and _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._ Oct. 21, 1865, p. 25.—ED.]

[134] Biddle, pp. 227-234, 312.

In a work entitled _Armorial de la Noblesse de Languedock_, by M. Louis de la Roque, Paris, 1860, vol. ii. p. 163, there is an account of the family of Cabot in that Province. The writer says that this family derived its name and origin from Jean Cabot, a Venetian nobleman who settled in Bristol in the reign of Henry VII.; was a distinguished navigator, the discoverer of Terre Neuve, thence passing into the service of Spain; that he had three sons,—Jean (who died in Venice), Louis, and Sebastian (who continued in the service of England and died in France without posterity); that Louis, here called the second son, settled at Saint-Paul-le-Coste, in the Cévennes, had a son Pierre, who died Dec. 27, 1552, leaving a will, by which is shown his descent from Jean the navigator, through his father Louis. Through Pierre the family is traced down to the present time. The arms of the family are given: _Device_, “D’azur à trois chabots d’or;” motto, “Semper cor cabot Cabot,”—the same as those of the ancient family of Cabot in the island of Jersey, whence the New England family of Cabot sprung. Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in the introduction to his _Life of George Cabot_, has given reasons for believing that the French family was derived from that of Jersey. The three sons of John Cabot named in the letters patent of March 5, 1496, are Louis, Sebastian, and Sancius, the last of whom is not named in the list here cited.