Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/171

 comparatively new but suspicious story which removes it to Venice. One of the dreams of Sebastian's life, inherited from his father, was the finding of ‘a new passage’ to Cathay or Tanais, perhaps Tainsu, by the north or north-east (, p. 193). At the age of forty-eight years or thereabout, having received no encouragement in Spain, Sebastian endeavoured to secure the attention of Gaspar Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, whom he met at Valladolid in 1522, in order that the scheme should be brought before the council of ten in Venice. If we are to believe the ambassador, Cabot at a secret interview by night endeavoured to gain his ear by saying, ‘Signor ambassator, per dirve il tuto io naqui a Venetia, ma sum nutrito in Ingelterra’ (, p. 348). Assuming Contarini's report to be correct, Cabot's motive for ingratiating himself is so obvious that the interview must be regarded as a mere display of diplomatic finesse. Although negotiations were reopened as late as 12 Sept. 1551, Cabot never ventured to Venice in the interval of twenty-nine years to substantiate his claims as a citizen or his statements. In short, it is now shown and admitted by his latest biographer ‘that all the alleged facts were used as a pretext and a blind was on both sides avowed’ (, iii. 31). The old tradition is in favour of Bristol, which Cabot had no motive for claiming falsely. Eden, the old friend of Cabot, while translating fol. 404 of vol. i. of G. B. Ramusio's ‘Il Navigatione’ of 1550 for his own ‘Decades’ in 1555, two years before Cabot's death, went out of his way to refute a similar story to Contarini's which he found in his text. In a marginal note Eden writes: ‘Sebastian Cabot tould me that he was borne in Brystowe, and that at iiii. yeare owld he was carried with his father to Venice, and so returned agayne into England with his father after certayne yeares, wherby he was thought to have bin born in Venice’ (fol. 255).

There are two interesting accounts of Sebastian Cabot's early years which read as follows: 1. ‘Sebastian Cabote, a Venetian borne, whom being yet but in maner an infante, his parentes caryed with them into England, havying occasion to resort thither for trade of marchandies, as is the maner of the Venetians too leave no parte of the worlde vnsearched to obteyne richesse’ (, 3 Dec. bk. vi. Eden's trans. fol. 118). 2. ‘When my father departed from Venice many yeares since to dwell in Englande to follow the trade of marchaundies, he took me with him to the citie of London whyle I was very yong, yet having neverthelesse sum knowledge of letters of humanitie and of the sphere’ ({{sc|Ramusio}{}, Eden's trans. fol. 255). A glance at the movements of John Cabot in Spain and Italy after 1476 serves to show that these two accounts refer to the last journey of his parents (about 1493) from Venice to Bristol viâ London while Sebastian was a minor in his eighteenth year (cf., i. 28).

Early in 1496 we find the name of Sebastian Cabot associated with those of his father and two brothers in the following petition to Henry VII: ‘Please it your highness of your moste noble and haboundant Grace to grant unto John Cabotto, citezen of Venes, Lewes, Sebastyan, and Sancto, his sonneys, your gracious letteres patentes … according to the tenour hereafter ensuyng,’ which was to commission them to sail for the discovery of islands, countries, &c., which were then unknown to all christians. These letters patent were granted on 5 March 1496. With this commission John Cabot and his sons set sail from Bristol in the spring of the following year with two ships, one of which was named the Matthew, which resulted in the discovery of the new-found lands of Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia on St. John's day 1497. On 3 Feb. 1498 letters patent were granted, in the name of John Cabot only, for a second expedition to the field of his first discoveries; the fleet of five ships set sail early in the summer and was expected to return towards September. According to Raimondo di Soncino, who wrote on 18 Dec. 1497, these discoveries were recorded by John Cabot on a map, and also on a globe, which are now lost (, p. 192). Nothing is known of the termination of this second voyage, and from this period the history of John Cabot ceases.

It is much to be feared, from the ambiguous and often contradictory accounts of the voyages of 1497 to 1499 in contemporary chronicles, that nearly if not all the discoveries that are usually assigned to Sebastian Cabot are really those of his father. According to Stow (p. 862) Sebastian (?) Cabot ‘made a voyage with two ships in the 14th yeare of Henry VII,’ or 1499. If this is the voyage referred to by Peter Martyr (, p. 119), Lopez de Gomara (ib. 318), and Galvano, he, or more probably his father, must have sailed along the coast of Labrador almost up to latitude 60° north and have returned along the coast of Baccalos, or Newfoundland, thence almost out of sight of land down to latitude 30°, whence he steered for England. The descriptions of the regions explored apply to no portion of the United States, but only to the coasts of Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia, as laid down upon