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 and Brazil to Portugal. In April 1526 he was appointed to the command of an expedition to Brazil. He visited the river and adjoining district of La Plata, and founded a fort at San Salvador, spending nearly four years in attempting to lay the foundations of the Spanish conquest of South America. The attempt was such a failure, that on his return to Spain in August 1530 he was imprisoned for nearly a year, and afterwards condemned by the council of the Indies to two years' banishment to Oran in Africa for mismanagement and excesses committed during the course of the expedition. He, however, returned to Seville in June 1533, and was soon reinstated in his former position. As remarked by Oviedo, Cabot was ‘a good person, and skilful in his office of cosmography, and making a map of the whole world in plane or in a spherical form, but it is not the same thing to command and govern people as to point a quadrant or an astrolabe’ (ii. 169). For the next eleven years his duties as examiner of pilots in the Contractation House at Seville were varied by several voyages too unimportant to dwell upon (, p. 256), and in compiling materials for his famous mappemonde. The original of this famous map was drawn on parchment, and illuminated with gold and colours. The last that was heard of the manuscript was the sale of it at the decease of Juan de Ovando, president of the Council of the Indies, in September 1575. Another draft of it was afterwards engraved, apparently in three different states; the first in 1544; the second edition, dated 1549, and seen by Nicholas Chytraeus (Kochhoff) in 1566; a third one, ‘cut by Clement Adams [q. v.], which in his day was to be seen in the privie gallery at Westminster, and in many other ancient merchants' houses.’ Of these the only one preserved to us is the unique example which was discovered in Germany in 1844, and which is now so distinguished an exhibit in the Galerie de Géographie of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It is projected in plano on an ellipse with a longitudinal axis of 39 inches, and a parallel axis of 44 inches, engraved and coloured. It bears the following inscription: ‘Sebastian Caboto capitan, y piloto mayor de la S.c.c. m. del Imperador don Carlos quinto … hizo esta figura extensa en plano, anno de … J.C. 1544.’ There are legends on the map both in Latin and Spanish, the latter being corrupted at the hands of a Fleming. It was probably printed at Antwerp, the great centre of the production of geographical works at this period. It embodies not only Cabot's discoveries in South America, and those of his father in North America, but also those of the Portuguese and Spaniards down to his day. It served as the model for all the general maps of the world afterwards published in Italy, and also for the well-known ‘Typus orbis terrarum’ by Abraham Ortelius of Antwerp, so often reproduced by Hakluyt and others down to the end of the sixteenth century. Cabot's last official act as pilot-major to Charles V was the exercise of his censorship upon Pedro Medina's ‘Arte de Nauegar,’ Valladolid, 1544, fol.

Shortly after the death of Henry VIII (28 Jan. 1547), Cabot received tempting offers from friends in England to transfer his services to the country of his birth. That no time was lost in accepting them is proved by the following minute of the privy council of Edward VI under date of 9 Oct. 1547: ‘Mr. Peckham had warrant for 100 li for the transporting of one Shabot ( [sic]), a pilot, to come out of Hispain to serve and inhabit in England.’ According to Strype ( i. 296), he once more settled in his native town, Bristol. In the following January he was awarded a pension of 166l. 13s. 4d. by the year during his life (, xv. 181). No sooner had this news reached the ears of the Emperor Charles at Brussels, than he somewhat imperiously, through the English ambassador there, conveyed to the privy council in England his desire that ‘Sebastian, grand pilot of the emperor's Indies, then in England, be sent over to Spain as a very necessary man for the emperor, whose servant he was, and had a pension of him’ (, loc. cit.) On 21 April 1550 the privy council in England replied, ‘that as for Sebastian Cabot, he of himself refused to go either into Spain or to the emperor, and that he being of that mind, and the King of England's subject, no reason or equity would that he should be forced or compelled to go against his will’ (Harl. MS. 523, fol. 6). This application was renewed in the reign of Queen Mary on 9 Sept. 1553, but without result. Hakluyt records (iii. pref.) that King Edward, in addition to his pension, advanced him to be grand pilot of England. This, however, is an error, as no mention is made of it in either of the three patents relating to his pension. This honorary office was first created for Stephen Borough [q. v.] in 1563. Important work was soon found for Cabot, in addition to a general supervision of the maritime affairs of the country. He was called upon to settle the long growing disputes that had almost reached their height between the merchants of the steelyard, a colony of German traders of the Hanseatic League, and the mer-