Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/229

 JOHN CABOT'S VOYAGE 175 at liberty." The ambassador had been sent to England to negotiate a marriage between Princess Katherine of Spain and Arthur, Prince of Wales. In the previous decade Henry VII missed the offer of the Genoese Columbus, which would have made England the dis- coverer of the southwestern route. In 1496 he granted letters patent to the Genoese Cabots John and his three sons to sail under the royal flag by the north, east, and west. The south is significantly omitted from the license. John Cabot, a Genoese by birth but a naturalized citizen of Venice, appears to have visited Mecca, had sojourned in Portugal and Spain, and settled in Eng- land. With the aid of the Bristol merchants and the sanction of King Henry's patent, he at length set forth from the Severn on May 2, 1497, in one small vessel, the Mathew, with a crew of eighteen, of whom seventeen were Bristol men. He hoped to reach Asia by the north Atlantic, as Columbus was then supposed to have reached it by the south, and " to make London a greater place for spices than Alexandria." He returned on August 6th, having in reality discovered North America, but in the opinion of his contemporaries having gained for England " a great part of Asia, without a stroke of the sword." Slowly and with much reluctance did England aban- don this belief. Yet the voyages of 1498, 1500, 1502, and subsequent years made it evident that America was not Cathay. The latter name, Cathay or Cataya, the old land travellers had vaguely applied to Tartary