The King also took some small part in certain other events, which
seemed to him, at the time, of less consequence than these matrimonial
alliances. But history has regarded them in a different light from
that in which the cunning and cautious monarch considered them.
A glance at the map (opposite) will sho how different our world is
from that with which the English were acquainted when Henry was
crowned. Then the earth was generally supposed to be a flat body
surrounded by the ocean. The only countries of which anything was
certainly known, with the exception of Europe, were parts of western
Asia, together with a narrow strip of the northern, eastern, and
western coasts of Africa. The knowledge which had once existed of
India, China, and Japan appears to have died out in great measure with
the travelers and merchants of earlier times who had brought it. The
land farthest west of which anything was then known was Iceland.