Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/248

 194 ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO REACH INDIA tore the Papal award of 1493 into shreds, and with it the charter of the Catholic monopoly in the Indian seas. We must be careful, however, not to overestimate the binding force of the Bull of 1493. I have said that at the end of the fifteenth century no Christian nation seriously disputed the Papal award. But the outbreak of free thought during the first quarter of the sixteenth, which grew into the Reformation in Germany and England, was also represented in France by the struggle of Francis I with the Pope. The witty king among his courtiers would have liked to see the testament of Father Adam which authorized his Holiness to divide out the world. For a moment, indeed, Francis I seemed disposed to give practical effect to his jibe. The Flor- entine Captain Verazzani, whom he commissioned to make discoveries to the northwest, adventured about 1524 southwards within the demarcation line. The expedition failed. The explorer was eaten by cannibals, or, as is supposed with less likelihood, was captured by the Spaniards and hanged at Madrid, and the Eldest Son of the Church never repeated the at- tempt. When the Huguenots became a power in France, during the middle of the century, the forward party settled colonies on the coasts of Brazil and Flor- ida, between 1555 and 1564. But the Brazilian settle- ment lapsed to the Portuguese, the Florida colonies were destroyed by the Spaniards and were chiefly re- membered in France as episodes in the Protestant movement. Such infringements of the Papal award formed maritime incidents of greater religious or polit-