the famous map of 1544 noticed below (cf. Weise, p. 202). Of the nature of these discoveries nothing is known. There were other expeditions to Newfoundland set forth by the Bristol merchants Nicholas Thorn the elder and Eliot, assisted by Portugese, from 1501 to 1505, but there is no eyidence that Sebastian Cabot was in any way connected with them; on the contrary, according to a contemporary manuscript hitherto unnoticed by Cabot's biographers, 'Sebastyan . . . was neyer in that fiina [i.e. Newfoundland] himself, and made report of many things only as he heard his father and other men speke in times past' (Herbert, i. 411). We hear nothing more of him for the next dozen years, during which period he was doubtless well employed in the study of the accounts of the discoyeries of Columbus and his followers. His fame as a cartographer had already attracted the notice of Henry VIlI, for we read in the king's exchequer accounts in May 1512: 'Paid Sebastian Tabot (sic Cabot), making of a carde of Gascoigne and Guyon (Guienne), 20s. (Brit. Mus, Add, MS. 21481). Feeling, howeyer, dissatisfied at the want of encouragement from the king, at the instance of Lord Willoughby he went to Spain in the following autumn, and entered the seryice of King Ferdinand the Catholic as cartographer, and a member of the council of the New Indies, with the rank of captain, at a yearly salary of 50,000 maravedis. He was ordered to remain in Seyille in readiness for any work that might be assigned to him. Before the close of the year he married Catalina Medrano, eyidently a Spaniard (Navarrete, ii. 698). On 18 Nov. 1515 Cabot figures as one of the cosmographers who met to define the rights of the Spanish crown to the Moluccas (ib. iii. 319). About this period he was directed to prepare for a voyage of discoyery towards the northwest. According to Peter Martyr, 'this voyage' was 'appointed to bee begunne in March in the yeare next followynge, being the yeare of Chryst, 1516' (Eden, p. 119). But this and other projects were frustrated by the death of Ferdinand on 23 Jan. previous, and by the jealous conduct of Cardmal Ximenes as regent, which led to Cabot's return to England towards the end of the year (Fox Bourne, i. 42).
This brings us to the well-known story of the disputed yoyage of Cabot with Sir Thomas Perte about the year 1517. The sole authority for this yoyage is Eden, in his 'Treatyse of Newe India.' In the dedication he writes : 'Kyng Henry the VIII about the same yere of his raygne, furnished and sent forth certen shippes under the gouernance of Sebastian Cabot, yet liying (1553), and one Syr Thomas Perte, whose laynt heart was the cause that that viage took none effect.' Hakluyt in 1589, in his eagerness to confirm Eden^ story, had the misfortune, through a printer's error in 'Ramusio' (iii. 204), to associate it with an incident in a voyage now known to be that of John Rut (Rotz?), correctly recorded in Oviedo's earlier work of 1535 (cap. xiii. fol. 161 ) under its true date of 1527. Hence the confusion, which has led not only to the rejection of Eden's story, but also of Cabot's own statement that he was in England in 1517 or thereabouts. In Contarini's despatch quoted aboye, Cabot, on the Christmas eye of 1522, is reported to haye said, 'Now it so happened that when in England some three years ago, unless I err. Cardinal Wolsey offered me high terms if I would sail with an armada of his on a voyage of discoyery; the vessels were almost ready, and they had got together 30,000 ducats for their outfit.' Observing that he could not do so without the emperor's leave, he adds : 'I wrote to the emperor by no means to give me leave to serve the King of England . . . and that on the contrary he should recall me forthwith' (Miscell. Philobiblon Soc. ii. 15). Although Cabot may have exaggerated the purport of a chance conversation with Wolsey, there can be no reasonable doubt that he was in England probably till the close of 1519. That he knew Perte is also probable, as the latter was of an old Bristol family (cf. Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 29866). A careful review of all the known facts relating to this much-disputed yoyage serves to show that it is highly probable that Henry VIII, through Wolsey, took advantage of Cabot's temporary stay in England at tnis period to request him to organise a small expedition, which 'tooke none effect,' or perhaps did not even leave our shores, either through the timidity or jealousy of Perte, who at this period was a yeoman of the crown and overseer of ballasting ships in the Thames (Brewer, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 110, and Norden, p. 39). A second visit by Cabot, and a second failure of a voyage in 1519, as suggested by Harrisse (p. 116), evidently refer to the same story. On 6 May 1519 Cabot was appointed pilot-major to Charles V when he returned to Spain. From this period up to the time of his interview with Contarini in 1522 he appears to have been employed in making researches in reference to the variation of the needle first observed by Columbus. In the spring of 1524 he attended the conference of Badaios as an expert on behalf of the emperor, which terminated in assigning the Moluccas to Spain,
