VOYAGES AND PROJECTS OF DISCOVERY UNDER HENRY VIII
During the reign of Henry VIII, although English prestige increased and
commerce became firmly established, it must be confessed that
commensurate progress was not made in discovery and oceanic enterprise.
The king himself was intermittently anxious to promote such
undertakings, but the preoccupations arising from Continental politics
proved too strong for him. His hostility to France involved the
maintenance of the old alliance with the Netherlands and Spain; and
while that alliance endured England was barred from all the more
profitable parts of the New World.
Also, there was as yet no real public interest in discovery; England was
not _awake_ to matters that were common knowledge and subjects of eager
discussion in the Peninsula, in France, Italy, and even in inland
Germany. Although diligent chroniclers and accomplished men of letters
existed in Henry’s England, we look in vain for a Hakluyt, or even a
Richard Eden, to record for us the details of such minor adventures as
were actually attempted. Hakluyt himself in after years lamented ‘the
great negligence of the writers of those times, who should have used
more care in preserving of the memories of the worthy acts of our
nation’. Closely connected, either as cause or result, with this
indifference was a deplorable want of the knowledge necessary to
success. As seamen the Englishmen of the time were unsurpassed, but with
a few honourable exceptions, such as Robert Thorne and William Hawkins,
they took no interest in the advance of navigation and cosmography.
Thorne is the only Englishman in the reigns of the first two Tudors who
is known to have written on such matters. Consequently the lack of an
enthusiastic, well-informed leader was even more detrimental to the
accomplishment of important discoveries than was the want of public
support. The adventures of the reign of Henry VIII illustrate the truth
that expansion must be national and spontaneous if it is to produce
permanent results; the early attempts of the Cabots and their Bristol
contemporaries had been allowed to die of neglect, and it was not until
the revival of oceanic enterprise, first by William Hawkins and
afterwards by the merchant companies who sent fleets to West Africa and
the White Sea, that world-wide interests became a regular factor in
English life and history.
The first recorded project of the reign is an alleged voyage to the
North-West by Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Pert or Spert in 1516. Its
actual occurrence is doubtful, and rests primarily on the authority of
Richard Eden, who, in the dedication to his _Treatise of the Newe
India_, published in 1553,[217] says: ‘Our Sovereign Lord King Henry
VIII, about the same year of his reign (i. e. 1516 or 1517), furnished
and sent forth certain ships under the governance of Sebastian Cabot,
yet living, and one Sir Thomas Perte, whose faint heart was the cause
that voyage took none effect.’ This is the sole definite and express
statement that such a voyage took place. Purchas, it is true, refers to
it, but he evidently copied Eden and had no independent knowledge. It
has been suggested that Ramusio’s note in the preface to his third
volume (see Chap. IV, pp. 89–90), and also the lines in the _New
Interlude_ (Chap. V, pp. 111–13), refer to this expedition, but it must
be allowed that they apply equally well to other voyages. The doubt as
to their intention thus destroys any value they might have as evidence
of the occurrence of a voyage in 1516.[218] In favour of Eden’s
statement it must be remembered that Sebastian Cabot was in England in
1553 and was personally known to the author, who probably derived his
information from him direct. But Cabot, as is evidenced by other
incidents in his career, had no scruple in distorting the truth when it
suited his purpose, and it was certainly to his interest to magnify his
services to England at a time when he was living on the bounty of the
English Crown, and was engaged in promoting fresh northern explorations.
The ascertained record of the doings of Cabot throws little light on the
matter. He was in England in May 1512, when he was paid twenty shillings
for making a map of Gascony and Guienne for the use of the expedition
sent to Biscay under the Marquis of Dorset for the invasion of those
provinces. This is his first reappearance in history after the voyages
at the end of the fifteenth century. Whether or not he had lived in
England during the interval is unknown. He accompanied Dorset’s
expedition to Spain, and transferred himself to the service of King
Ferdinand, by whom, on October 20, 1512, he was appointed a naval
captain. He then took up his abode at Seville. His residence in Spain
can be continuously traced until November 13, 1515, after which date no
further mention of him occurs until February 5, 1518, when he was
appointed Pilot Major of Spain by the Government of Charles V, Ferdinand
having died in January 1516. He is thus quite unaccounted for during the
years 1516 and 1517. It is possible that, thinking his prospects in
Spain unpromising, he returned to England on the death of
Ferdinand.[219]
The movements and employments of Thomas Spert can be much more
satisfactorily traced. As a mariner in the service of Henry VII he had
carried dispatches between England and Spain.[220] He served, evidently
with credit, in the navy during the war of 1512–14. In 1512–13 he was
master of the _Mary Rose_, one of the most important fighting ships in
the fleet. On the approaching completion, towards the end of the latter
year, of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_, the largest vessel then constructed
in England, he was transferred to her as master. On November 10, 1514,
he was granted an annuity of £20, which was confirmed in January
1516.[221] Again, on July 10, 1517, he was granted the office of
ballasting ships in the Thames, which office he was to hold during
pleasure at a rent of £10 a year.[222] This militates strongly against
one part of Eden’s story, namely, that it was Spert’s misconduct which
spoiled the success of the voyage of discovery. The office was evidently
one of profit, and would hardly have been granted to one who had
recently disgraced himself. But indeed the whole theory of Spert’s
connexion with a voyage of discovery at this time is effectively killed
by a document in the Record Office which has not hitherto been quoted in
this connexion. It is a manuscript book[223] showing the issues of
various stores to the masters of the king’s ships, and it proves beyond
doubt that between 1515 and 1521 Thomas Spert never vacated his post as
master of the _Henry Grace à Dieu_. There are entries showing his
presence in that ship on April 7 and July 3, 1516, and on April 28 and
September 17, 1517, which, together with the grant on July 10 of the
last-mentioned year, are conclusive evidence that he could not have made
a voyage to America at the period in question.
What is known of the remainder of Spert’s career shows that he continued
in high favour. He served in the war of 1522–5 and was consulted by the
admiral as to the best way of cutting out some Scottish privateers in
Boulogne harbour. He remained master of the _Great Harry_ until 1530.
His next promotion was to be ‘Clerk Controller’ of the king’s ships. By
the year 1533 he had been knighted.[224] In 1542 he was granted lands in
Essex, and he is last heard of in 1544 as the owner of a ship called the
_Mary Spert_, which was serving with the fleet against the French.[225]
It is probable that he died soon afterwards; it may be deduced from
Eden’s remarks that he was not living in 1553.
On the whole this voyage of 1516 must be ranked as of extremely doubtful
authenticity. Spert certainly had nothing to do with it, but there is
nothing in the known evidence to render it impossible that Sebastian
Cabot had. On the other hand, it has left no contemporary record in
official papers, and the chroniclers of the reign are absolutely silent
with regard to it. The most feasible conclusion is that the story was
the combined product of the credulity of Richard Eden and the senile
romantic tendencies of Sebastian Cabot.
Whatever may have happened in 1516, there is no doubt that Henry’s mind
was running on schemes of western discovery; and in 1521 a new design
was mooted whose details rest upon much surer authority.[226] Early in
that year two members of the Privy Council, Sir Robert Wingfield and Sir
Wolston Brown, were deputed to lay the king’s proposals before the
Livery Companies of London. The plan was as follows: the Companies were
to furnish five ships of not more than 120 tons each for a voyage to
‘the Newefound Iland’, and to be responsible for the victualling and
wages; the king was to find the tackle and ordnance and ‘bear the
adventure of the said ships’, whatever that may mean; the City of London
should have control of the whole enterprise, although other towns might
participate—Bristol had already promised two ships; ten years’ exclusive
monopoly of the new trade was offered, with exemption from customs for
the first thirty months. As will be seen from what follows, the
expedition was evidently to be placed under the command of Sebastian
Cabot, although his surname is nowhere mentioned.
The germ of the enterprise was most probably the departure in 1519 of
Magellan’s squadron for the discovery of a south-west passage into the
Pacific. The actual existence of that passage was not yet known, for
Magellan’s _Victoria_ did not return until 1522 with the news of the
discovery of the Strait of Todos Sanctos and the circumnavigation of the
globe. All that Henry knew was that the Spaniards were challenging the
Portuguese monopoly of trade with eastern Asia; and he doubtless felt at
liberty to do the same if he could find a north-west passage past the
new-found lands which English enterprise had explored in his father’s
reign. Most probably King Henry knew of Sebastian Cabot’s former attempt
in this direction—we may fairly assume that a man of his learning would
be acquainted with Peter Martyr’s _Decades of the New World_, published
in 1516, even if he had as yet no personal knowledge of Cabot
himself—and it was natural that he should wish to entrust the command of
the new expedition to a man with previous experience of the task.
The cautious merchants of the Livery Companies, however, showed little
eagerness to adventure their ships and money in a scheme which had
already proved financially unsound within the memory of many of them.
Moreover, any success which might be obtained would inevitably be more
to the profit of Bristol than of London. The seamen and merchants of the
former port were more accustomed to distant enterprises, and their
geographical position would give them as much advantage in a
north-western trade as it did in the traffic with Bordeaux and Spain.
Accordingly, the Companies hung back and advanced objections. The
wardens of the Drapers said that they had no authority to bind their
fellowship to any outlay; also that there were in their Company ‘but few
adventurers, saving only into Flanders, whereunto requireth no great
ships’. If the king would supply the vessels they would do their best to
find a cargo, but they feared trouble with Spain, which would entail
perilous consequences to their legitimate trade.
The Drapers seem to have taken the lead in opposing the design. In a
communication to the Mercers they suggested that it would be advisable
to have more information from English mariners with respect to the route
proposed, ‘although it be further hence than few English mariners can
tell. And we think it be too sore adventure to jeopard five ships with
men and goods unto the said Island upon the singular trust of one man
called, as we understand, Sebastian, which Sebastian, as we hear say,
was never in that land himself, all if he makes report of many things as
he hath heard his father and other men speak in times past.’[227] Also,
they continued, even if Sebastian had been there, and were the most
cunning navigator imaginable, it would be a great risk to venture five
ships in the event of his death or of a separation of the fleet, in
which case four ships at least would be in peril by lacking a pilot.
They concluded by objecting that it was impossible to victual the ships
for a whole year. The other eleven Companies gave a partial and grudging
acquiescence. They were willing to find two ships and ‘they supposed to
furnish the third’, but they desired a longer respite. The king and the
Cardinal, however, would be content with no half measures. The Lord
Mayor was sent for to speak with the king. ‘His Grace would have no nay
therein, but spake sharply to the Mayor to see it put in execution to
the best of his power.’ But passive hostility triumphed; a few niggardly
subscriptions were collected and then the whole matter was allowed to
drop. As far as is known, not a single vessel put to sea.
It is plain that the ‘Sebastian’ of the Drapers’ protest was Sebastian
Cabot. The reference to his father is sufficiently conclusive, and the
contention is borne out by two other circumstances. In 1524 Sir Thomas
Lovell died, and among the debts paid after his death occurs the
following item: ‘18 Feb. (year not stated), to John Goderyk, of Foly,
Cornwall, draper, for conducting Sebastian Cabot, master of the pilots
in Spain, to London, at our testator’s request, 43_s._ 4_d._’[228] This
of course might possibly relate to the dubious voyage of 1516,
especially as, in that event, his coming to England in February would
tally very well with the death of King Ferdinand on January 23. But the
supposition is rather far-fetched, and is further vitiated by the fact
that Cabot was not Pilot Major until 1518. It seems more likely that
Cabot’s visit to England was in connexion with the 1521 project. Again,
when he was plotting to betray his geographical secrets to the Venetian
Government, Cabot made the following statement to their envoy Contarini
at Valladolid in December 1522: ‘Now it so happened that when in England
three years ago, if I mistake not, Cardinal Wolsey offered me high terms
if I would sail with an armada of his on a voyage of discovery. The
vessels were almost ready, and they had got together 30,000 ducats for
their outfit. I answered him that, being in the service of the King of
Spain, I could not go without his leave, but if free permission were
granted me from hence, I would serve him.’[229] Allowing for Sebastian’s
constitutional inaccuracy in the matter of dates, which in this case
expands twenty-one months to ‘about three years’, there is here fairly
trustworthy evidence on the question. We are not, of course, obliged to
believe that Sebastian failed to take the command from the motive of
high principle which he describes. Henceforward he had no further
concern with English enterprises until his final reappearance in England
in 1548.
In 1525 Henry was in treaty with another foreign navigator, Paolo
Centurioni the Genoese, to whom he promised the leadership of an
expedition for the discovery of new countries. Centurioni came to
London, but died there before the plan took practical shape; and the
affair was again in abeyance for lack of a skilled leader.[230]
Centurioni’s idea was apparently to open up communication with Asia by
way of Muscovy and the North-East—a foreshadowing of Willoughby’s
expedition of 1553.
The idea of a northern passage to the Pacific was again revived in 1527.
In that year Robert Thorne, a Bristol merchant then residing at Seville,
addressed to King Henry a _Declaration of the Indies_,[231] in which he
exhorted him again to take in hand the promotion of northern
exploration, not only because the Spaniards and the Portuguese had
already monopolized the western and eastern routes, but also ‘because
the situation of this your realm is thereunto nearest and aptest of all
other: and also for that you have already taken it in hand ... though
heretofore Your Grace hath made thereof a proof and found not the
commodity thereby as you trusted, at this time it shall be no
impediment. For there may be now provided remedies for things then
lacked, and the inconveniences and lets removed that then were cause
Your Grace’s desire took no full effect, which is, the courses to be
changed, and followed the foresaid new courses.’ Thorne appealed to the
honour of the king and the nation not to be left behind in the race. He
minimized the danger of Arctic voyages, and enlarged on the advantages
to mariners of the perpetual daylight of the Arctic summer. He argued
that the Arctic seas were everywhere navigable, and suggested a route to
eastern lands right over the Pole itself. ‘For they, being past this
little way which they named so dangerous, which may be two or three
leagues before they come to the pole, and as much more after they pass
the pole, it is clear that from thenceforth the seas and lands are as
temperate as in these parts.’ After passing over the Pole, he continued,
three routes lay open to navigators: they might turn towards eastern
Asia, reaching Tartary, China, Cathay, the Moluccas, and so home by the
Cape of Good Hope; or they might decline to the west and go down by ‘the
back side of the new found land, which of late was discovered by Your
Grace’s subjects, until they come to the back side and south seas of the
Indies occidentals’, and then through the Straits of Magellan to
England; but if they should take a middle course between these two, ‘and
then decline towards the lands and Islands situated between the Tropics
and under the Equinoctial, without doubt they shall find the richest
lands and islands of the world of gold, precious stones, balms, spices,
and other things that we here esteem most, which come out of strange
countries; and may return the same way. By this it appeareth Your Grace
hath not only a great advantage of the riches, but also your subjects
shall not travel half of the way that other do, which go round about as
aforesaid.’
Thorne also expressed his ideas in greater detail to Doctor Lee, Henry’s
ambassador at that time in Spain.[232] He enclosed a map, which Hakluyt
has preserved, and entered into elaborate calculations to show that the
northern route to the Pacific was much shorter than those used by either
the Spaniards or the Portuguese. He referred to the Spanish expedition
which had sailed from Seville in the previous year for the Spice
Islands, and mentioned that he and his partner had invested 1,400 ducats
so as to have an excuse for sending two Englishmen to accompany it and
report on those regions.[233] He claimed that his father and Hugh Elyot
were the original discoverers of Newfoundland, and that they would have
reached the Indies but for a mutiny.
That the book to Dr. Lee was written in the first quarter of 1527 is
evidenced by a reference to Cabot’s squadron of 1526 as having sailed
‘in April last past’, but there is no clue to the month of the letter to
the king. Hence it cannot be stated with certainty that the expedition
which we have next to consider was a consequence of that letter.
Whether it was or not, the fact remains that two ships were commissioned
in 1527 and placed under the command of John Rut, a master mariner who,
like Spert, had served in the navy during the French wars. Grafton’s
_Chronicle_ has a brief entry relative to their departure: ‘This same
month (May, 1527) the king sent two fair ships, well manned and
victualled, having in them divers cunning men, to seek strange regions;
and so forth they set out of the Thames the 20th day of May; if they
sped well you shall hear at their return.’ In spite of which promise,
the _Chronicle_ makes no further mention of them. Hakluyt attempted to
glean some further information about this voyage, with very little
success. Martin Frobisher and Richard Allen told him that one of the
ships was called the _Dominus Vobiscum_, and that a canon of St. Paul’s,
whose name they did not know, but who was a great mathematician, was a
promoter of the enterprise and went with it in person: and that,
‘sailing very far north westward, one of the ships was cast away as it
entered into a dangerous gulf, about the great opening between the north
parts of Newfoundland and the country lately called by Her Majesty Meta
Incognita. Whereupon the other ship, shaping her course towards Cape
Breton and the coasts of Arambec, and oftentimes putting their men on
land to search the state of those unknown regions, returned home about
the beginning of October of the year aforesaid.’
Although Hakluyt was ignorant of the fact, however, two letters from
members of the expedition were in existence, and Purchas printed one of
them in his _Pilgrims_.[234] This, the first letter on record from
America to England, is worth quoting in full for the quaintness of its
style and the unconscious picture which it affords of the mind of an
early Tudor seaman. Purchas remarks: ‘John Rut writ this letter to King
Henry in bad English and worse writing, Over it was this superscription:
“Master Grube’s two ships departed from Plymouth the 10 day of June,
and arrived in the Newfoundland in a good harbour, called Cape de Bas,
the 21 day of July: and after we had left the sight of Selle (Scilly),
we had never sight of any land, till we had sight of Cape de Bas.”’
The letter itself runs thus:
‘Pleasing your honourable Grace to hear of your servant John Rut, with
all his company here, in good health, thanks be to God, and your
Grace’s ship the _Mary Gilford_, with all her ... thanks be to God:
And if it please your honourable Grace, we ran in our course to the
northward, till we came into 53 degrees, and there we found many great
islands of ice and deep water, we found no sounding, and then we durst
not go further to the northward for fear of more ice; and then we cast
about to the southward, and within four days after we had one hundred
and sixty fathom, and then we came into 52 degrees and fell with the
mainland. We met with a great island of ice, and came hard by her, for
it was standing in deep water; and so went with Cape de Bas, a good
harbour and many small islands, and a great fresh river going far up
into the main land, and the main land all wilderness and mountains and
woods, and no natural ground but all moss, and no inhabitation nor no
people in these parts: and in the woods we found footing of divers
great beasts, but we saw none, not in ten leagues. And please your
Grace, the _Samson_ and we kept company all the way till within two
days before we met with all the islands of ice, that was the first day
of July at night, and there rose a great and a marvellous great storm,
and much foul weather; I trust in Almighty Jesu to hear good news of
her. And please your Grace, we were considering and a writing of all
our order, how we would wash us and what course we would draw, and
when God do send foul weather, that with the Cape de Sper she should
go, and he that came first should tarry the space of six weeks one for
another, and watered at Cape de Bas ten days, ordering of your Grace’s
ship and fishing, and so departed toward the southward to seek our
fellow: the third day of August we entered into a good haven, called
St. John, and there we found eleven sail of Normans, and one
Brittaine, and two Portugall barks, and all a fishing, and so we are
ready to depart toward Cape de Bas, and that is twenty five leagues,
as shortly as we have fished, and so along the coast till we may meet
with our fellow, and so with all diligence that lies in me toward
parts to that islands that we are commanded by the Grace of God, as we
were commanded at our departing: And thus Jesu save and keep your
honourable Grace, and all your honourable Rever(ences), in the Haven
of Saint John, the third day of August, written in haste, 1527.
‘By your servant John Rut to his uttermost of his power.’
Purchas continues: ‘I have by me also Albert de Prato’s original letter,
in Latin style, almost as harsh as the former English, and bearing the
same date, and was indorsed: Reverend. in Christo Patri Domino Domino
Cardinali & Domino Legato Angliae: and began Reverendissime in Christo
Pater salutem. Reverendissime Pater, placeat Reverendissimae paternitati
Vestrae scire, Deo favente postquam exivimus a Plemut quae fuit x Junii,
&c. (the substance is the same with the former and therefore omitted).
Datum apud le Baya Saint Johan in Terris Novis, die x Augusti, 1527.
Rever. Patr. vest. humilis servus, Albertus de Prato. (The name written
in the lowest corner of the sheet.)’
How were these letters dispatched to England? Probably by one of the
fishing vessels which was on the point of returning to Europe. It was
evident that Rut had no immediate intention of turning back. The ‘Master
Grube’ of the endorsement must certainly be a perversion of Rut’s name.
It is impossible that there should have been two independent pairs of
ships both departing from Plymouth on the same day and both making the
same landfall in Newfoundland at the same time. Unfortunately Purchas’s
editing was very careless, as witness his remark that Rut’s and de
Prato’s letters were of the same date; and, in spite of his assurance of
their identity in substance, one cannot help suspecting that important
details may have been contained in de Prato’s letter.
From quite a different source we hear of the further adventures of Rut
and his vessel. Herrera in his _Historia General_,[235] under the
erroneous date of 1519, says that a Spanish caravel encountered an
English ship off the island of Porto Rico—a ship of three masts and
about 250 tons. Gines Navarro, the Spanish captain, thinking it was a
Spanish ship, was going aboard when he was met by a pinnace with
twenty-five armed men and two guns. They said they were English, and had
set sail with another large ship to find the land of the Grand Cham, and
that a storm had separated them. They had been in a high latitude and
had encountered great icebergs, and turning further south they had come
into a hot sea, and lest it should melt their pitch they had made for
the Baccalaos, where they found fifty ships fishing—Spanish, French, and
Portuguese. They landed there to make inquiries of the Indians, who
killed the pilot, a Piedmontese. Navarro asked them what they were doing
in those islands, to which they replied that they wished to make a
report to their king, and to trade. They asked him to show them the
course for San Domingo. When they arrived at that island they were fired
upon, and so did not land. They went back to Porto Rico and traded with
the inhabitants, and then disappeared. The ship had sixty men with
plenty of guns and merchandise. Oviedo’s _Historia General das Indias_
gives a corroborating account under the correct date, 1527, and adds
that, as nothing more was heard of this ship, she was supposed to have
been lost.[236]
Such, however, was not the case, for, in the autumn of 1528, John Rut,
still in the _Mary Gilford_, was engaged in bringing wine from Bordeaux
to England.[237] There is no further trace of the _Samson_, and it is
probable that she was lost, although Frobisher’s story that she
foundered in Hudson’s Strait does not agree with John Rut’s northernmost
latitude of 53°.[238] Before setting out on his voyage John Rut
received, on May 24, 1527, a grant of an annuity of £10.[239] This is
two days later than the sailing date from London given in the
_Chronicles_, but the discrepancy is not serious, for England was not
finally lost sight of until June 10.
In reviewing the evidence above set out, it is evident at once that here
was another quest of the North-West Passage. John Rut’s letter,
describing the attempt to force a way northwards through the icebergs of
Davis Strait, and its reference to the islands which he had received
instructions to make for—evidently not the islands of the new-found
land, but far beyond them—point to that conclusion; and the story told
to the Spanish captain, as to seeking the land of the Grand Cham, is
conclusive. We may therefore set this down as the third authenticated
English expedition for the discovery of the northern route to Asia,
those of Sebastian Cabot and the Anglo-Portuguese syndicate being the
first and second.
On closely comparing the above accounts with Robert Thorne’s letter to
the king, it is evident that the voyage of John Rut was _not_ an attempt
to put Thorne’s theories into practice, but rather a revival of
Sebastian Cabot’s old plan of finding a passage by closely hugging the
supposed northern shore of America. Thorne, on the other hand, wished to
send his expedition over the Pole itself, and such a course would have
taken it well to the east of Iceland and Greenland, and would, in fact,
have lain almost at right angles to that actually followed by Rut. Hence
it becomes certain, either that Thorne’s ideas were modified by the
king’s advisers in London, possibly by Albert de Prato, who seems to
have been a man of learning, or that Thorne’s letter was written after
the unsuccessful return of the surviving vessel. It must be remembered
that, although the _Book to Dr. Lee_ is dated by internal evidence early
in 1527, there is no such clue to the date of the letter to the king.
Also, certain expressions quoted from the letter as to the advisability
of following new courses, if literally construed, are consonant with the
recent return of an expedition which had failed on the old course. On
the whole, then, it must be left in doubt whether Thorne may claim the
honour of being the author of the voyage of 1527.
Yet another mystery is the identity of the Italian pilot who, according
to the Spanish captain’s account, was killed by Indians. There is
absolutely no confirmatory evidence that such a man accompanied the
expedition. It is more probable that, apart from Rut, there was no pilot
in the ordinary sense of the word as then used, and that Albert de Prato
was the man referred to. There is no proof of his return from the
voyage, and it is quite possible that, in the conversation between the
English and the Spaniards, with an imperfect command of each other’s
languages, a man with a knowledge of geography and astronomy might have
been described as a ‘pilot’.
A brief account of the Thorne family may be of interest, especially as
an incomplete article on them appears in a recent authority on the
subject, the _Dictionary of National Biography_. The father of the
Robert Thorne who wrote the treatises above considered was another
Robert Thorne, who, at the opening of the sixteenth century, was a
prosperous merchant of Bristol. According to his son he accompanied Hugh
Elyot on a voyage of discovery to the North-West about the year 1502,
although his name does not appear in the charters granted for that
purpose by Henry VII. In 1510 he was one of a group of Bristol men who
were appointed to act as commissioners for the office of admiral in
their town.[240] In 1514 he was mayor of Bristol,[241] and in 1523 was
returned as Member of Parliament for that city,[242] dying in London
shortly afterwards. He was evidently dead at the time his son was
writing, in 1527. A Bristol historian, however, states that he died in
1519, in which case the M.P. of 1523 must have been Robert Thorne the
younger (J. Latimer, _Sixteenth Century Bristol_, 1908; authorities not
given). He was buried in London in the Temple Church, and his epitaph
runs as follows:
Epitaphium M. Roberti Thorni, sepulti in Ecclesia Templariorum
Londini.
Robertus jacet hîc Thorne, quem Bristolia quondam
Praetoris merito legit ad officium.
Huic etenim semper magnae Respublica curae
Charior & cunctis patria divitiis.
Ferre inopi auxilium, tristes componere lites
Dulce huic consilio quosque juvare fuit.
Qui pius exaudis miserorum vota precesque
Christe huic coeli des regione locum.[243]
Barrett, writing in 1789, speaks of this epitaph as still existing in
his time.
Robert Thorne the younger was born in 1492[244] and was four years
senior to his brother Nicholas Thorne.[245] They were both merchants,
and carried on their father’s business, which seems to have been
principally with the ports of Andalusia. Robert had a house in Seville
and resided there for some years. The Thornes and other English
merchants traded with the Canary Islands and even with the West Indies,
sending their goods by way of Spain. Hakluyt, who was in possession of
some of their ledger books and letters, mentions that in 1526 they
dispatched two English agents in a Spanish ship to Santa Cruz in
Teneriffe with a cargo of cloth and soap, with instructions to sell the
goods in the Canaries.[246] From the same source we learn that an
Englishman named Thomas Tison acted as a kind of secret factor for them
in one of the West Indian islands, and distributed the goods which they
shipped in Spanish vessels. Tison, the first recorded Englishman to
reside in the West Indies, was a Bristol man who served as a mariner
against the French in 1514. He is mentioned in Robert Thorne’s will, and
returned in safety from the Indies, as we find him doing business at
Cadiz in 1534.[247]
Robert Thorne the younger was held in great estimation in Seville. Dr.
Lee, writing to Wolsey in 1526, mentions that the emperor had spoken to
‘a right toward young man as any lightly belongeth to England, called
Thorne’. His geographical writings show him to have been a man of
learning and originality of mind, while his distant enterprises, and
especially his investment of a large sum in Cabot’s fleet of 1526 so
that Englishmen might accompany it, indicate a breadth of view and a
generous willingness to take risks for great results, in keeping with
the best traditions of English commercial enterprise. In 1532 he was
again in England, and, with his brother and others, set about the
founding and endowing of a grammar school in Bristol. Before the
completion of this purpose, however, he died unmarried on Whit-Sunday of
the same year. The inventory of his goods, drawn up by his brother
Nicholas, shows that his fortune amounted to nearly £17,000, a large sum
for those days.[248] In his will,[249] made shortly before his death, he
made numerous bequests to his sisters, his business friends and
servants, and his brother. He left £400 towards ‘the making of a free
school of St. Bartholomew in Bristol’. A reference to ‘Pawle Withipole,
my master’ suggests that he belonged to the Company of Merchant
Adventurers, of which body Withipole was then a prominent member.
Barrett (p. 650) says that Thorne was buried in the Church of St.
Christopher, London, with the following epitaph, for which he does not
mention his authority:
Robertus cubat hic Thornus, mercator honestus,
Qui sibi legitimas arte paravit opes:
Huic vitam dederat puero Bristollia quondam,
Londinum hoc tumulo clauserat atque diem,
Ornavit studiis patriam, virtutibus auxit,
Gymnasium erexit sumptibus ipse suis.
Lector quisquis ades requiem cineri precor optes,
Supplex et precibus numina flecte tuis.
Obiit 1532, aetatis vero suae anno 40.[250]
Nicholas Thorne outlived his brother several years, taking a prominent
part in the affairs of his native city. He was a friend of Thomas
Cromwell’s, and engaged in business transactions on his behalf. In
1536–7 he built a merchant vessel for Cromwell, which was named the
_Saviour_ and made her first voyage to Andalusia.[251] He was evidently
of the Catholic party in Bristol, to judge from some very insulting and
disparaging references to him in a Protestant letter of 1539.[252] In
1544 he became mayor of Bristol, and in the following year we find him
appealing on behalf of some English merchants who had suffered
ill-treatment at San Sebastian.[253] He died in 1546 at the age of
fifty,[254] leaving two sons, of whom one was named Nicholas.
One other voyage to the North-West remains to be chronicled under Henry
VIII. In the year 1536 a certain Master Hore of London, a man learned in
cosmography, and apparently of good position and fortune, was possessed
with the desire to make a voyage to North America. He was joined by
others of the same mind, including Armigil Wade or Ward, who afterwards
held an official position under Henry VIII and Edward VI. With the
king’s consent and good will two ships, the _Trinity_ and the _Minion_,
were fitted out, and 120 persons embarked, of whom 30 were gentlemen,
many of them being lawyers of London. They departed from Gravesend at
the end of April 1536.
Hakluyt,[255] the authority for this voyage, received a personal
relation of it from Thomas Butts, one of the participators, who survived
until his time; and the editor’s cousin, also named Richard Hakluyt,
furnished him with an account he had personally received from Oliver
Dawbeny, another survivor. After leaving Gravesend the explorers were
more than two months at sea before reaching Cape Breton. Thence they
coasted north-eastwards along the Newfoundland shore, visiting an island
which they called the Island of Penguins, on account of the numbers of
birds they saw there. Black and white bears were also encountered. They
failed to get into touch with the natives, who fled at their approach,
and soon their stock of food became exhausted. As time went on the
agonies of famine became so acute that, when scattered over the country
in search of food, some of the members of the party were killed by
others and their flesh cooked and eaten. Hore did his best to stop these
excesses, gathering the whole company and exhorting them to perish
rather than ‘be condemned everlastingly both body and soul to the
unquenchable fire of hell’. Nevertheless, they were again on the point
of casting lots to see who should be killed when a French ship arrived
in the bay, well stocked with food. She was attacked and captured by the
starving Englishmen, who victualled themselves and set sail immediately
for home. Meeting with much ice on the way, they arrived at St. Ives at
the end of October. Butts, as he told Hakluyt, who made a journey of 200
miles to obtain his narrative, was so changed by hunger and misery that
his parents failed to recognize him.
Some months afterwards the Frenchmen who had been relieved of their
victuals arrived in England and complained to King Henry; but he, after
inquiring into the matter, ‘was so moved with pity that he punished not
his subjects, but of his own purse made full and royal recompense unto
the French’.
This expedition can hardly claim to rank as a serious voyage of
discovery; it was rather of the nature of a tourist’s cruise under very
incompetent guidance. It was not promoted by sailors but by landsmen,
who, whatever their book-knowledge, had very little practical experience
of voyaging. The necessity for cannibalism in a country swarming with
game and a sea teeming with fish could hardly have arisen in an
expedition organized by other than amateurs. There is no mention of any
purpose of trading or searching for a passage to the North-West. Hore’s
associates, as Hakluyt says, were mainly ‘gentlemen of the Inns of Court
and of the Chancery, and divers others of good worship, desirous to see
the strange things of the world’. It was not from such a party that any
useful results could be expected, lacking, as it did, the essentials of
success: clearly defined purpose, strong leadership, and knowledge
tempered by experience.
As far as is now known, no other English ship set out to solve the
problem of the north until 1553, the date of Willoughby’s departure in
search of Cathay by the north-east. That the matter was not entirely
forgotten we are reminded by a passage in Chapuys’s correspondence with
the Queen of Hungary. Writing on May 26, 1541, he says:
‘About two months ago there was a deliberation in the Privy Council as
to the expediency of sending two ships to the northern seas for the
purpose of discovering a passage between Iceland and Engronland
(Greenland) for the northern regions, where it was thought that, owing
to the extreme cold, English woollen cloths would be very acceptable
and sell for a good price. To this end the King has retained here for
some time a pilot from Seville well versed in the affairs of the sea,
though in the end the undertaking has been abandoned, all owing to the
King not choosing to agree to the pilot’s terms, so that for the
present at least, the city of Antwerp is sure of not losing the
commerce of woollen cloth of English manufacture.’[256]
There is no reason to suppose that the pilot of Seville was Sebastian
Cabot, as has been suggested. The professional training which the
Spanish pilots received before being granted their certificates produced
numerous competent navigators, many of whom would have been superior in
theoretical knowledge to the master mariners of England, and therefore
able to render good service in Arctic exploration.
The majority of the North Atlantic voyages already considered were for
discovery with an ultimate view to trade; but towards the end of Henry
VIII’s reign certain adventurers undertook purely trading expeditions to
regions already explored and partially occupied by the Portuguese.
Hakluyt relates that William Hawkins, of Plymouth, father of Admiral Sir
John Hawkins, and one of the principal sea captains of the west of
England, made three voyages to the coast of Brazil in 1530 and the years
following.[257] Details are given of only two of the voyages, which were
made in a vessel of 250 tons called the _Paul_, of Plymouth. Of the
first, no information is forthcoming, unless it was on this occasion
that Hawkins touched at the coast of Guinea on his way out, buying ivory
and the other produce of the country. This circumstance is so vaguely
described as to be applicable to any or all of the expeditions. On the
second occasion such good relations were established with the natives of
Brazil that they consented to allow Hawkins to take one of their chiefs
to England, leaving as a hostage one of the crew, Martin Cockeram by
name. This is the man whom Kingsley introduces in _Westward Ho!_ as
conversing, in extreme old age, with the captains assembled on Plymouth
Hoe when news was brought of the approach of the Armada. There was
nothing impossible in such a situation, since Hakluyt, writing in 1599,
says: ‘Martin Cockeram, by the witness of Sir John Hawkins, being an
officer of the town of Plymouth, was living within these few years.’
The Brazilian chief was brought to England and presented to Henry VIII
at Whitehall. The whole court was astonished at his appearance, ‘for in
his cheeks were small holes made according to their savage manner, and
therein small bones were planted, standing an inch out from the said
holes, which in his own country was reputed for a great bravery. He had
also another hole in his nether lip, wherein was set a precious stone
about the bigness of a pease. All his apparel, behaviour and gesture
were very strange to the beholders.’ After nearly a year in England,
Hawkins, according to his promise, set sail to Brazil once more to take
him back. But he was destined never to see his native shores again, for,
‘by change of air and alteration of diet’, he died at sea. Nevertheless
the natives were so impressed with the honourable dealings of the
English that they accepted their explanations without demur and restored
the hostage unharmed.
From his third voyage Hawkins returned with his ship freighted with the
commodities of the country, which are not further specified. The exact
locality, also, to which his journeys were made, is unknown. Hakluyt
tells no more of William Hawkins, but he has brief notices of other
adventurers to Brazil at about the same period. He was informed that
‘this commodious and gainful voyage’ was frequently made by numerous
Southampton merchants, and, in particular, by Robert Reneger and Thomas
Borey in 1540; also that one Pudsey, of Southampton, made a voyage to
Baya de Todos Santos in 1542, and built a fort not far from it.
The details of another Brazil voyage have recently come to light among
the Admiralty papers at the Record Office.[258] On March 7, 1540, the
_Barbara_ of London set sail from Portsmouth under the command of John
Phillips. She captured a Spanish bark off Cape St. Vincent, and later on
a caravel also. Arriving at the coast of Brazil on May 3, Phillips first
traded and afterwards fought with the natives, losing many of his crew.
After this unsatisfactory experience he sailed homewards by way of the
West Indies. At San Domingo he fought with two Spanish vessels, one of
which he captured. On his return to Dartmouth, in August of the same
year, he and the surviving members of his company were arrested for
piracy at the instance of Chapuys. The result of their trial is unknown.
Fuller evidence on these transactions is believed to exist in Spain, and
it is to be hoped that it will soon be made public.
With regard to Hawkins’s further operations, a letter exists from him to
Thomas Cromwell in 1536, to the following effect:
‘Most honourable and my singular good lord: so it is that I durst not
put myself in press to sue unto your good lordship for any help or
succour to be obtained at your hands in my poor affairs, until such
time (as) I had first put my ship and goods in adventure to search for
the commodities of unknown countries, and seen the return thereof in
safety; as, I thank God, hath metely well happened unto me, albeit by
four parts not so well as I suppose it should if one of my pilots had
not miscarried by the way. Wherefore, my singular good lord, I now,
being somewhat bold by the reason aforesaid, but chiefly for the great
hope and trust I have in your accustomed goodness, I most humbly
beseech your good lordship to be mean for me to the King’s highness,
to have of His Grace’s love four pieces of brass ordnance and a last
of powder, upon good sureties to restore the same at a day. And
furthermore, that it may please His Grace, upon the surety of an
hundred pound lands, to lend me £2000 for the space of seven years
towards the setting forth of three or four ships. And I doubt me not
but in the mean time to do such feats of merchandise that it shall be
to the King’s great advantage in His Grace’s custom, and to your good
lordship’s honour for your help and furtherance herein....
Your most bounden orator,
William Hawkyns of Plymouth.’[259]
If the above refers to trading voyages to Guinea and Brazil, as seems
reasonably probable, it would appear that Hawkins had given up going in
person with a single ship, and was acting as manager of a fleet of
vessels which were sent out under employed captains in the manner of a
modern shipping company. The trade was evidently thought worthy of
cultivation.
Another sidelight on the Brazil trade is thrown by a letter of Chapuys
to Charles V.[260] Writing on January 2, 1541, he says that to obviate
piracy he will try to get it enacted that no armed ship shall sail from
the ports of England for Brazil and such countries without giving
security not to attack the emperor’s ships. This supports the theory of
the regular traffic which Hakluyt described as being carried on from
Southampton at the time. It is significant also of the growing interest
in strange lands that in 1541 a request was made by the Privy Council
that Englishmen might be allowed to accompany the next Portuguese
navigation to Calicut to buy spices for English consumption. Needless to
say, it was not granted. During this period French adventurers were also
making voyages to Brazil. Francis I forbade the enterprise to his
subjects in December 1538, but withdrew his prohibition in 1540. Early
in the next year the English envoy in France reported that the
Portuguese ambassadors were daily suing for the stay of the ships that
were being permitted to sail to Brazil. If they persisted in going, he
added, they were likely to suffer, as the Portuguese had sent many armed
vessels thither. It is strange that we have no record of similar
protests being made in England, especially as a Portuguese ambassador
was in the country at the time. Whether they were or not, it would seem
that the Brazil voyages were discontinued during the ‘forties’ of the
sixteenth century. The reason was probably to be found in the renewal of
war with France and the unsettled state of the narrow seas quite as much
as in Portuguese remonstrances or warships. On the outbreak of war the
large vessels suitable for transatlantic voyages would be requisitioned
for the fleet; and thenceforward for many years Hawkins and the others
found piracy, thinly disguised under letters of marque, more profitable
than trade.
A few facts relating to Hawkins and Reneger may be of interest. The
former was a supporter of Cromwell, and acted as one of his numberless
correspondents—to use no harsher word—on the affairs of his part of the
country. There was a bitter feud, for reasons now unknown, between
Hawkins and a faction headed by Thomas Bolle, who was mayor of Plymouth
in 1537. In the previous year the parties had been summoned before Sir
Piers Edgecumbe, and had agreed to waive their differences and live
together in peace according to the old customs of the town. Bolle,
however, wrote to Cromwell, in 1537, protesting against Hawkins’s
conduct and accusing him and his friends of disturbing the peace of the
place. He further asked that the Hawkins faction might be expelled from
the town council. Hawkins evidently triumphed in this affair, for he was
chosen mayor in 1538–9, at which time he and his friend James Horswell,
who had previously been banished, were engaged in taking over Church
property for the Government.
The war of 1544 brought him to the front in a new capacity. In September
of that year a commission was made out for Hawkins, Horswell, and John
Elyot, empowering them to proceed to sea and annoy the French with four,
six, or eight barks at their own charges, and also to impress such
mariners, gunners, victuals, and artillery as they needed. In May 1545
Hawkins was denounced by a Spaniard for ‘colouring’ French goods. He was
also charged, jointly with Thomas Wyndham, with capturing a ship
belonging to the Spaniards. He apparently paid little attention to the
charge, for, two months later, he was committed to prison by the Council
for selling the Spaniards’ goods. Next year another privateer of which
he was part owner—the _Mary Figge_—took some goods illegally. The owners
of the _Mary Figge_ were slow to disgorge, and the personal authority of
the king had to be called in to coerce them. Henry, in spite of his
tigerish fierceness towards any others who withstood him, could always
find a soft place in his heart for his sailors who erred from
over-boldness; and he ordered that they should be given another chance
to make amends before being punished. As Hakluyt relates, Hawkins was
‘for his wisdom, valour, experience and skill in sea causes, much
esteemed and beloved of King Henry’. He gradually attained a kind of
official position, being entrusted with the construction of a fort at
Plymouth and with the supply of victuals for the fleet. He was Member of
Parliament for his town in 1539, 1547, and 1553. He died at the end of
the latter year or at the beginning of 1554. Energetic, versatile, able
to turn his hand to politics, trade, discovery, or war, headstrong and
quarrelsome, defiant of the law in an age of dreadful penalties, and yet
withal patriotic and humane to the weak, it is a pity that our knowledge
is so scanty of a career which was so typical of the new, progressive
Englishmen of the Renaissance.
Robert Reneger at Southampton was something of a counterpart to William
Hawkins of Plymouth. Like him, he was not content with petty coasting
voyages and European trade hampered by the surviving shackles of
mediaevalism. Like him also, he abandoned the lucrative Brazil trade for
still more lucrative privateering when the renewal of the wars rendered
the western seas of Europe a treasure-ground for the brave. In 1543 he
obtained letters of marque against the French, after entering into a
recognisance not to attack the Emperor’s subjects. Nevertheless, in
March 1545, he and his son John Reneger, with four ships and a pinnace,
captured off Cape St. Vincent a Spanish treasure-ship homeward bound
from Hispaniola with gold, pearls, and sugar, and worth the dazzling sum
of 29,315 ducats. Such a prize, foreshadowing the exploits of the
Elizabethans, must have furnished an object-lesson on the wealth of the
Spanish Indies which was never forgotten by the seamen of the southern
shores of England.
[Illustration:
ENGLISH WARSHIP, TEMP. HEN. VIII.
From Cott. MS. Aug. I. ii. 70.
]
The immediate consequence was almost a war with Spain. All English
merchants and ships in that country were arrested and were not released
for many months. Reneger asserted that he had only made just reprisal
for the confiscation of a prize of his in Spain; and the Spaniards
complained that he, although a known pirate, was swaggering at court as
though he had done a meritorious deed. No doubt his merit consisted in a
judicious distribution of shares of the plunder, after the manner of
Drake in later times. Henry, who loved success and the man that gained
it, and who was angry at the conduct of the Emperor in other matters,
did not make any real attempt at enforcing reparation. It was only after
his death that the Council compelled a partial restitution, and the
affair was patched up. The richness of the prize may be gauged from the
fact that the bribe of bullion offered to the king alone was worth at
least £5,000 in modern currency. It was this sum (13 lb. 3 oz. of gold
and 131 lb. 5 oz. of silver) which the Council ordered Reneger to
restore. He is last heard of as Controller of the Port of Southampton in
1556.[261]
-----
Footnote 217:
Reprinted, 1885, by Dr. E. Arber, p. 6.
Footnote 218:
To make Ramusio, iii, Preface, apply to 1516, it is further necessary
to assume a misprint in his work, as he distinctly says that the
voyage he describes took place under Henry VII.
Footnote 219:
For Sebastian Cabot’s career in Spain see Harrisse, _John and
Sebastian Cabot_ (1896), which contains a syllabus of documents
relating to him.
Footnote 220:
_R. O., Book of King’s Payments_ (_T. R. Misc._, Bk. 214): ‘Ann. 21
Hen. VII Aug. 7th. Item to Thoms Perte maryner in rewarde that come
from the king of Castill, x sh.’
Footnote 221:
_Letters and Papers_, ii, No. 1462, and p. 875.
Footnote 222:
Ibid., No. 3459.
Footnote 223:
_Exchequer T. R. Misc. Bks._, vol. x. The entries relating to Spert
all resemble the following: ‘The herry gce diew. Delyv’de the xxvij
daye of September anno dicto [7th year of Henry VIII] to thoms spte
for the herry gce diew iiij cabulls....’
‘The herry gce diew, the katryn fortune and the gabryell riall.
Delyv’de to thoms spte [and the other two masters] the vijth. daye of
ap’ll anno dicto [7th year of the reign] vj barells tarre.’ In no case
is any other person but Spert designated as the master of the _Henry
Grace à Dieu_.
Footnote 224:
His knighthood has been disputed, but two official documents speak of
him as Sir Thomas Spert (_Letters and Papers_, vi, No. 196. xvii, No.
1258).
Footnote 225:
_Letters and Papers_, many references.
Footnote 226:
_Wardens’ Manuscript Accounts of the Drapers’ Company_, vol. vii,
86–7. Printed _in extenso_ in Harrisse, _Discovery of North America_,
iii. 747.
Footnote 227:
This passage has been regarded as fatal to the connexion of Sebastian
Cabot with a voyage in 1516, and even to his claims to have made
discoveries under Henry VII. As regards the former, it is quite
compatible with an expedition which returned without discovering land,
which is precisely what Eden hints at. On the latter point it is to be
remarked that the third Cabot voyage (that of Sebastian in search of
the North-West Passage) ended in failure and obscurity and was
overshadowed by the expeditions of the Bristol syndicates; thus it is
not surprising that the London Drapers were able to profess a very
convenient ignorance of it. They could hardly do the same about John
Cabot in view of the notoriety of his discovery in 1497, and the
brilliance of his reception in London in that year.
Footnote 228:
_Letters and Papers_, iv, part i, p. 154.
Footnote 229:
_Venetian Cal._, iii, No. 607.
Footnote 230:
Agostino Giustiniani, _Castigatissimi Annali_, Genova, 1537, lib. vi,
f. cclxxviii. Quoted by Harrisse in _John and Sebastian Cabot_ (1896),
pp. 337–8.
Footnote 231:
Hakluyt, ii. 159–63.
Footnote 232:
_The Book made by Master Robert Thorne_, Hakluyt, ii. 164–81.
Footnote 233:
This was Sebastian Cabot’s expedition, which never passed the Straits
of Magellan, but turned instead into the River Plate. The two
Englishmen were Roger Barlow and Henry Latimer. There is no record of
their personal adventures, although the details of the voyage are well
known. See Harrisse, _John and Sebastian Cabot_ (1896).
Footnote 234:
Maclehose edition, 1905, xiv. 304.
Footnote 235:
_Historia General_, Madrid, 1601, Dec. II, lib. v, cap. iii, pp.
144–5.
Footnote 236:
1852 ed., Bk. 19, chap. xiii, p. 611.
Footnote 237:
_Letters and Papers_, iv, No. 5082.
Footnote 238:
The author of an article in the _English Historical Review_ (vol. xx,
p. 115) suggests that it was the _Samson_ and not the _Mary Gilford_
which visited the West Indies, but there seems to be no satisfactory
proof of this. The balance of evidence certainly points to the loss of
the _Samson_ in the North-West.
Footnote 239:
_Letters and Papers_, iv, No. 3213 (20).
Footnote 240:
_Letters and Papers_, i, No. 1050.
Footnote 241:
See his epitaph and Barrett, _Antiquities of Bristol_ (1789), p. 683.
Footnote 242:
Archives of Bristol, quoted by Fox Bourne, _English Merchant_ (London,
1866), i. 155.
Footnote 243:
Hakluyt, ii. 181.
Footnote 244:
See his epitaph, p. 261.
Footnote 245:
Barrett, p. 483.
Footnote 246:
Hakluyt, vi. 124.
Footnote 247:
_Letters and Papers_, i, No. 5026; vii, No. 938.
Footnote 248:
Ibid., iv, No. 2814.
Footnote 249:
Robert Thorne’s will is copied in an Elizabethan hand on the back of
folio 209 of _Cotton MS._, Vitellius A xvi, a city chronicle which was
printed by C. L. Kingsford in 1905. The will is not included in the
printed edition.
Footnote 250:
_The Dictionary of National Biography_ states: (1) that Nicholas
Thorne was the father of Robert, and the participator in Hugh Elyot’s
voyage; and (2) that Robert Thorne junior died in 1527 at Seville. The
latter statement is evidently due to the fact that the inventory of
Thorne’s goods, drawn up by his brother, is calendared in the _Letters
and Papers_ under the date 1527. There is nothing in the document
itself (_R. O., S. P. Hen. VIII_, § 40, f. 219) to indicate its date.
On the other hand, the will (Vitellius A xvi, f. 209b) distinctly
says, ‘Anno 1532 on whitsonday dyed Robart Thorn’. The grant in
connexion with the Grammar School on March 2, 1532 (_Letters and
Papers_, v, No. 909), shows that Robert Thorne junior was living at
that date, and also speaks of Robert Thorne deceased. The possibility
that the Robert Thorne of Seville and the Robert Thorne who died in
1532 were two different men is negatived by a comparison of the
inventory with a signed letter (_R. O., S. P. Hen. VIII_, § 81, f.
151) by Nicholas Thorne. The handwriting of both is identical, showing
that the inventory was written by Nicholas, and therefore that it
referred to the goods of his brother who, as the will shows, died in
1532.
Footnote 251:
_Letters and Papers_, vi, No. 1696; xii, No. 233; xiv, part ii, No.
172.
Footnote 252:
Ibid., xiv, part i, No. 184.
Footnote 253:
Ibid., xx, part ii, No. 874.
Footnote 254:
Barrett, p. 483.
Footnote 255:
Hakluyt, viii. 3.
Footnote 256:
_Spanish Cal._ vi, No. 163.
Footnote 257:
Hakluyt, xi. 23.
Footnote 258:
See the _English Historical Review_, xxiv. 96, article by R. G.
Marsden.
Footnote 259:
_R. O., S. P. Hen. VIII_, § 113, f. 180.
Footnote 260:
_Spanish Cal._ vi, part i, No. 148.
Footnote 261:
The above notes on Hawkins and Reneger are drawn from numerous
references in the later volumes of _Letters and Papers_, and from the
_Acts of the Privy Council_.