Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/227

 ENGLAND'S FRIENDSHIP FOR PORTUGAL 173 they should not intermeddle with the possessions of the King of Portugal or any other friendly Christian prince. Spain and Portugal, secure in the Papal award, looked on unperturbed, and in 1521 Henry VIII entered into a compact with the two nations against their common enemies and those of Christendom. In 1527 Charles V, Emperor and King of Spain, is said to have offered to sell his claims to the Moluccas to Henry VJJLL. This possible cause of a quarrel with Portugal came to noth- ing, and in 1529 the dispute between the two Iberian kingdoms was adjusted, as we have seen, by the Con- vention of Saragossa, while Henry VJLL1 joined with them in negotiations for a general peace of Europe and league against the Turk. The truth is that England believed herself on the eve of discovering a nearer way to India than either the Straits of Magellan or the Cape of Good Hope. In 1476 a Danish (or Polish?) pilot, John Scolus, is re- ported somewhat obscurely to have got to the passage north of Labrador, and, as Sir Clements Markham writes, " in 1477 Columbus himself learned from Eng- lish sailors of Bristol the management of an ocean voyage, when he visited Ultima Thule ' (Iceland). In 1480, a vessel of eighty tons sailed from Bristol under Captain Thylde, the pioneer of continuous Eng- lish exploration, to discover a land to the west of Ire- land called " Brasylle ' the Irish O'Brasil or Island of the Blest. He failed, but according to the Spanish ambassador, the Bristol merchants sent out two to four vessels every year from 1491 to 1498 on the same search.