Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/627

 1920 SHORT NOTICES 619 With the title England under the Yorkists (London : Longmans, 1919), Miss Isobel D. Thornley has edited the second volume in the series of ' source-books ' promoted by the Board of Studies in History in the University of London. The period covered is brief, and permits of copious illustration. Miss Thornley has taken good advantage of her opportunity, and has produced a very useful little volume. She has not been content to depend simply on printed sources, but has added some extracts from the manuscript ' Great Chronicle of London ', and many from records. One misses Simon Stallworth's two letters to Sir William Stonor, which were printed long ago in Excerpta Historica. But the selection is well made, and the book can be recommended to those for whom it is intended. The sources are adequately described in the introduction. ' Tester ' and ' seler ' (p. 243) do not mean ' canopy ' and ' hanging ', but ' head-frame ' and ' canopy '. • C. L. K. Mr. Henry Vignaud is in no way discouraged at the unfavourable reception of his theories regarding Christopher Columbus, and again sets them forth in a pamphlet entitled The Columbian Tradition on the Dis- covery of America and of the part played therein by the Astronomer Toscanelli ; a Memoir addressed to the Professors Hermann Wagner of the University of Gottingen and Carlo Errera of Bologna (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1920.) In his opinion ' the chief question in dispute is not the authenticity of the documents attributed to Toscanelli, but what was the real object of the undertaking of 1492 ' (p. 4). This, according to Mr. Vignaud, had not for its object the discovery of a route to the East Indies by way of the West, but. . . the discovery of an island,. . . probably Antilia, of which Columbus claimed to know the existence : that it was only after coming to an agreement with Pinzon at Palos that the question about Cypangu arose : that no effort was made to find it until all hope of finding the other island had gone : that then for the first time Columbus formed the belief that he had reached the East Indies (p. 25). In other words, until 6 October 1492 Columbus ' had no intention of reaching Cypangu ' (p. 23). On that day, when Coliimbus appeared undecided what to do, Pinzon suggested that they should alter their course to that which, according to him, would lead to Cypangu. Columbus at first refused, but thinking better of it, adopted the course suggested by Pinzon, which, as it turned out, led him to Haiti. ' From that moment Columbus acted as though he believed he was in the Indian seas ' (p. 24). This curious theory seems hardly reconcilable with several well-authenti- cated facts. Mr. Vignaud himself admits a few of these, as for instance, that it was this very Cypangu that Columbus, about 1486, proposed to King John to find. To Mr. Vignaud, however, this fact does not mean that Columbus intended to reach the east by way of the west, but merely that ' one could find in the west Cypangu and other unknown lands '.* He even accepts the authenticity of the letters of credence of 30 April 1492, but thinks it reasonable to suppose that Columbus ' asked for them, which it is likely he never expected to use, merely to satisfy his lieutenant Pinzon ' (pp. 54-5). Likewise the introduction to Columbus's journal is no hindrance, since from its contents, ' it is clear that Columbus wrote
 * Histoire critique de la grande entreprise de Christophe Colomb, i. 375.