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 but of all mankind. Progress was continuous. In 1505, the famous Company of Merchant Adventurers received their Charter and enlarged their commercial relations with the Low Countries and Germany; while the number of English ships trading to ports in the Mediterranean increased year by year. The voyage to the Levant occupied twelve months, and was beset by all kinds of perils, which were faced and overcome by the fighting seamen of London and Bristol.

Voyages to the westward were also continuous from the days of Canyng and Thylde; and some record of at least two — which were made during the reign of Henry VIII. — has been preserved. In 1527 the king sent out two ships, the Sampson and Mary of Guildford, well manned and victualled, under the command of John Rut of Ratcliff, yeoman of the Crown, and having on board a canon of St. Paul's and "divers cunning men to seek strange regions." They sailed on the 10th of June; but the Sampson was cast away on the coast of Labrador, and the other vessel returned in the following October. The letter from John Rut to Henry VIII., dated at St. John's, Newfoundland, on August 3rd, 1527, is given by Purchas. In the same year, Master Grube, with two ships, reached Cape Race. Nine years after, in 1536, a voyage was undertaken by a number of gentlemen of the Inns of Court, led by Master Hore of London, a man of goodly stature, great courage, and learned in the science of cosmography. The expedition consisted of thirty gentlemen volunteers, including a son of Sir William Butts of Norfolk, and a hundred seamen, in two vessels, the Trinity, of 140 tons, and the Minion, commanded by Captain Wade. Sailing from Gravesend they reached Cape Breton, after a voyage of two months, and proceeded thence to an island which, in those days, was frequented by thousands of great auks. The men drove numbers of these helpless birds into their boats and took their eggs, finding them to be "very good and nourishing meat." Many Basque, Breton, and English vessels came every season, and the wholesale destruction of the birds brought about their extinction in less than two centuries. The exploring vessels were then on the coast of Newfoundland, and "great want of victuals" was brought about by inexperience and mismanagement. The young barristers began to eat each other, which induced Captain Wade to preach a sermon on the impropriety of such conduct. Eventually a French vessel came in sight and was seized