nation of England to the number of about seven thousand,” together with
“more men of war of the kingdom of Denmark, of Flanders, and of
Antwerp,” set sail in ships then called “busses”—small vessels carrying
two masts, and with two cabins, one at each end—for the Holy Land. This
body of warring zealots reached Joppa after a prosperous voyage, and
thence, under a strong guard provided them by King Baldwin, passed to
Jerusalem safely from all assaults and ambushes of the Gentiles. When
they had solemnly offered up their vows in the Temple of the Holy
Sepulchre, they returned with great joy to Joppa, and were ready to
fight for Baldwin in any venture he might propose against the enemy.
Plans were formed to besiege a stronghold. But the move ended with an
effective demonstration of the fleet in brave array, displaying
“pendants and streams of purple and diverse other glorious colours, and
flags of scarlet colour and silk.”
Near the end of this century, in 1190, came the “worthy voyage of
Richard the first, king of England, into Asia for the recovery of
Jerusalem out of the hands of the Saracens,” with which began the
Third Crusade of the nine of history. This was that Richard, of
restless zeal, surnamed “Ceur de Lion,” Henry the second’s son. After
Henry’s death Richard, “remembering the rebellions that he had
undutifully raised” against his father, “sought for absolution of his
trespass.” And “in part of satisfaction for the same,” he agreed to
make this crusade with Philip, the French king. Accordingly so soon as
he was crowned he began his preparations. The first business was to
raise a comfortable sum of money for the expedition. It was promptly
accomplished by exacting “a tenth of the whole Realm, the Christians
to make threescore and ten thousand pounds, and the Jews which then
dwelt in the Realm threescore thousand.” At length his fleet was
afloat, and he was off to join Philip of France. This Crusade occupied
the first four years of Richard’s reign, and during it he made the
conquest of Cyprus, won a great victory at Jaffa, marched on
Jerusalem, concluded a truce with the sultan, Saladin, and slaughtered
three thousand hostages when Saladin failed to come to time with an
agreed-upon payment of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. The
butchery of the hostages was performed on the summit of a hill that
the tragedy might be in full view of Saladin’s camp. On his homeward
journey he was shipwrecked, and he was long imprisoned in Germany.
Hakluyt’s version of this Crusade is a detailed account “drawn out of
the Book of _Actes and Monuments_ of the Church of England written by
M. John Foxe,” more popularly known as Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_.
Richard’s code of laws and ordinances for the government of his
crusading fleet, well illustrates at once the rigour of the discipline
and the character of the British sailor of that day. It also discloses
the antiquity of the method of punishment by tar-and-feathering:
"1. That who so killed any person on shipboord should be tied with him
that was slaine and throwen into the sea.
"2. And if he killed him on the land, he should in like maner be tied
with the partie slaine, and be buried with him in the earth.
"3. He that shalbe convicted by lawfull witnes to draw out his knife or
weapon to the intent to strike any man, or that hath striken any to the
drawing of blood shall loose his hand.
"4. Also he that striketh any person with his hand without effusion of
blood, shall be plunged three times in the sea.
"5. Item, who so speaketh any opprobrious or contumelious wordes in
reviling or cursing one another, for so oftentimes as he hath reviled
shall pay so many ounces of silver.
“6. Item, a thiefe or felon that hath stollen being lawfully convicted,
shal have his head shorne and boyling pitch powred upon his head, and
feathers or downe strawed upon the same, whereby he may be knowen, and
so at the first landing place they shall come to, there to be cast up.”
In the Crusades of the thirteenth century we have notes on the
expeditions of the “Knights of Jerusalem” against the Saracens: in brief
recitals of the voyages of Ranulph, earl of Chester, sent out by Henry
the third in 1218, with “Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester, William de
Albanie, earl of Arundel, besides divers barons,” and “a goodly company
of soldiers and men at arms”; and of Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry
the third’s brother (and afterward king of the Romans), accompanied by
William Longespee, earl of “Sarisburie” (Salisbury) and other nobles
“for their valiancy greatly renowned,” and “a great number of Christian
soldiers,” in 1240, beginning the Seventh Crusade. In 1248 Longespee—or
Longsword, as his fellow-knights called him for his prowess—made a
second voyage and lost his life in a battle with the Saracens. Finally,
in 1270, Henry the third’s son, Prince Edward, and other young nobles,
having “taken upon them the cross,” at the hand of the Pope’s legate
then in England, “to the relief of the Holy Land and the subversion of
the enemies of Christ,” sailed out with a gallant war fleet. They landed
at Acre, and thence the prince, with an army of six or seven thousand
soldiers, marched upon Nazareth. This he took, and “those that he found
there he slew.” Other victories followed with much slaughter of
Saracens. At length the triumphant prince fell ill at Acre, and during
his sickness a plot was concocted by the emir of Joppa to remove him by
assassination. This failed, the prince thwarting the scheme by himself
killing the emir’s messenger just as the treacherous dagger was to be
thrust into his bosom. Shortly after he concluded a peace for ten years
and returned to England, to be crowned king upon his father’s death.
Edward’s was the last exploit of Englishmen in the Crusades, and it
closed the last one. Attempts were made at subsequent periods to revive
the flame, but these resulted only in flares of short duration. A
shining one for a moment was kindled by King Henry the fourth in 1413.
It flashed out with his sudden death at Westminster while the ships and
galleys for the proposed voyage were building.
[Illustration: “THE GREAT HARRY,” AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY.]
At this time the competition for trade advantages in the east and
northeast were becoming of larger import to England. A half-century
earlier, in 1360, in Edward the third’s reign, a Franciscan friar,
mathematician, and astronomer, Nicholas de Linna, of Oxford, had made a
voyage into the north parts, “all the regions situated under the
North-pole,” had taken valuable observations, and had reported his
discoveries to Edward with a description of the northern islands. In
1390 Henry, earl of Derby, afterward King Henry the fourth, made a
voyage into Prussia; and the next year the duke of Gloucester, Edward
the third’s youngest son, also penetrated Prussia. As early as 1344 the
island of Madeira had been discovered by an Englishman, and sometime
occupied. The latter, however, was not a commercial discovery, but a
romantic one, and England at the time, and for long after, was not aware
of it. Hakluyt takes the story from a Portuguese history. It was
regarded by most later historians as apocryphal, but its genuineness has
been finally demonstrated through the historical researches of the
English geographer, R. H. Major. It runs in this wise. The discoverer
was one Robert Macham, when fleeing from England to France with his
stolen bride, Anna d’Arfet. His ship was tempest-tossed out of its
course and cast toward this island. He anchored in a haven (which years
afterward was named Macham in memory of him) and landed on the island
with his lady and the ship’s company. Soon with a fair wind the ship and
part of the company “made sail away.” After a while the young woman died
“from thought,” perhaps homesickness; and Macham built a tomb for her
upon which he inscribed their names, and “the occasion of their arrival
there.” Then he ordered a boat made of a single great tree, and when it
was done, he put to sea with his few companions that were left. At
length they came upon the coast of Afrike (Africa) without sail or oar.
“And the Moors which saw it took it to be a marvellous thing and
presented him unto the king of that country for a wonder, and that king
also sent him and his companions for a miracle unto the king of Spain.”
With the opening of the fifteenth century, Portugal was pressing forward
for a share with the maritime states of Italy, Genoa, and Venice in the
rich eastern traffic. In 1410 Prince Henry, “the Navigator,” had begun
his systematic explorations. A younger son of the Portuguese king John
the first, and a grandson of Edward the third of England, born at the
close of the fourteenth century (in 1394), after gaining renown as a
soldier, he turned to loftier aims and became one of the first
astronomers, mathematicians, cartographers, and directors of maritime
discoveries in his time. He was the first to conceive the idea of
cutting a way out through the unexplored ocean. His superb genius gave
the inspiration to marvellous results in the discovery of more than half
the globe within the cycle of a century. At the age of twenty-four the
hope was born in him of reaching India by the south point of Africa, and
thereafter to this end his speculations and studies were ardently
directed. The earliest expeditions sent out by him failed of results,
and his theories were ridiculed by his fellow-nobles. At length,
however, in 1419 and 1420, the Madeira Islands, Porto Santo and Madeira,
were rediscovered by his navigators. A little more than a decade later,
in 1433, they had rounded Cape Bojador. In 1435 the prince’s cup-bearer
had passed beyond that cape. In 1443 another of his navigators had
sailed beyond Cape Blanco. The next year Pope Martin the fifth, by a
Papal Bull, declared Portugal in possession of all the lands her
mariners had visited as far as the Indies. In 1445 the mouth of the
Senegal and afterward Cape Verde were reached. Prince Henry died in
1460, but the work he had begun continued, after a temporary check, to
be carried forward. In 1469 Portuguese trade was opened with the Gold
Coast. In 1484 the mouth of the Congo was discovered. In 1486
Bartholomew Dias doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
Meanwhile these wondrous advances of Portugal were stimulating other
maritime nations to the quest for new passages to India.
V
QUEST FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Portugal now had practically a monopoly of the traffic with the Orient,
and the finding of new paths to India by her maritime rivals was
essential in the struggle for commercial supremacy. A passage by way of
“Cathay” had the most powerful attractions.
“Great Cathay,” the marvellous empire of the remote East, whence
travellers had brought wonderful tales in the latter Middle Ages, had
become the ultimate goal of adventurous voyages. The hazy region was the
“extremity of the habitable world” of the ancients. Early Christian
fancy had identified within it the Earthly Paradise, the seat of the old
“Garden of Eden,” beyond the Ocean stream, “raised so high on a triple
terrace of mountain that the deluge did not touch it.” Under the name of
Cathay the strange empire had been opened to the speculation of mediæval
Europe in the thirteenth century, with the vast conquest of the Mongol
Genghis Khan, reckoned in history one of the greatest conquerors the
world has ever seen.
Two Franciscan friars—John de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruk
(Rubruquis) in French Flanders, who reached the court in Mongolia, the
former in 1245 or 1246, the latter in 1247 or 1253—appear to have been
the first Europeans to approach its borders. They saw the Cathayans in
the bazaars of their Great Khan’s camps, and brought back to Europe the
first accounts of the people and of the wonderful things seen, presented
in their journals of their adventures. Both of these “rare jewels,” as
he appreciatively terms them, Hakluyt found at London in manuscripts
while delving in Lord Lumley’s library, and he printed them in full in
the second edition of the _Principal Navigations_. After the friars two
Venetians penetrated the empire, the first European travellers to visit
Cathay itself. These were the brothers Nicolo and Maffei Polo, members
of a noble trading family of Venice. They were there for a short time in
or about the year 1269. Soon afterward they made a second visit, when
Marco, the son of Nicolo, then a youth of seventeen, quick-witted,
open-eyed, and observant, accompanied them. This visit extended through
more than twenty years, the three Venetians basking in the sunshine of
the Great Khan’s favour. The elders helped the Khan with suggestions for
the profitable application of the knowledge of the West which they
opened to him, while Marco’s cleverness was variously employed in his
service; sometimes as a commissioner attached to the Imperial council,
at others on distant missions, and at one period a governor of a great
city. Marco’s recollections, given to the world long after the final
return of the Polos to Venice, first made the name of Cathay familiar to
Europe. These recollections were taken down from his lips by one
Rusticiano of Pisa, a clever literary hack, who was shut up in prison
with him for a year (the two having been among the captives taken by the
Genoese in a sea-fight with the Venetians in 1298), and formed the basis
of the book of marvellous adventures, subsequently published in various
languages and varying texts, which came to be famous as the _Voyages and
Travels of Marco Polo_. From this Hakluyt also gives copious extracts.
Commercial intercourse of adventuresome European traders began with the
region in the early fourteenth century, and continued fairly to flourish
for about fifty years. Then, with changes in dynasties and tribal wars,
the ways of approach were closed and it fell again into darkness. It was
long supposed to be a separate country, distinct from the Indies, lying
to the north of what we now know as China, and stretching to the Arctic
sea. It was not until 1603 (after the publication of the final volume of
the _Principal Navigations_) that it was found to be identical with the
then vaguely known empire of China, of which similar marvels had for
some time been recited. Its identity was the discovery by a lay Jesuit,
Benedict Goës, sent out through Central Asia by his superiors in India
for the specific object of determining whether Cathay and China were or
were not separate empires. Goës died upon the completion of his mission,
at Suhchow, the frontier city of China.
Cathay was the aim of Columbus. He was possessed by the conviction that
the fabled riches of this wondrous region lay directly across the
trackless Atlantic “over against” the coast of Spain. Believing the
world to be a sphere, he conceived his design of reaching Asia by
sailing west. This was the project that he carried for weary years from
court to court, seeking the patronage of a favouring prince.
But for a mischance England, instead of Spain, would have had the glory
and the advantage of his first discovery of 1492. Hakluyt recalls the
circumstances in these two “testimonies”:
(1)
"The offer of the discovery of the West Indies by Christopher
Columbus to king Henry the seventh in the yeere 1488 the 13 of
February: with the kings acceptation of the offer, & the cause
whereupon he was deprived of the same: recorded in the
thirteenth chapter of the history of Don Fernand Columbus of the
life and deeds of his father Christopher Columbus.
"Christopher Columbus fearing least if the king of Castile in like maner
(as the king of Portugall had done) should not condescend unto his
enterprise, he should be enforced to offer the same againe to some other
prince, & so much time should be spent therein, sent into England a
certaine brother of his which he had with him, whose name was
Bartholomew Columbus, who albeit he had not the Latine tongue, yet
neverthelesse was a man of experience and skilfull in Sea causes, and
could very wel make sea cards & globes and other instruments belonging
to that profession, as he was instructed by his brother. Wherefore after
that Bartholomew Columbus was departed for England his lucke was to fall
into the hands of pirats, which spoiled him with the rest of them which
were in the ship which he went in. Upon which occasion, and by reason of
his poverty and sicknesse which cruelly assaulted him in a countrey so
farre distant from his friends, he deferred his ambassage for a long
while, untill such time as he had gotten somewhat handsome about him
with making of Sea cards. At length he began to deale with king Henry
the seventh the father of Henry the eight which reigneth at this
present: unto whom he presented a mappe of the world, wherein these
verses were written, which I found among his papers: and I will here set
them downe rather for their antiquity than for their goodnesse:
"‘Thou which desirest easily the coasts of lands to know,
This comely mappe right learnedly the same to thee will shew:
Which Strabo, Plinie, Ptolomew and Isodore maintaine:
Yet for all that they do not all in one accord remaine.
Here also to set downe the late discovered burning Zone
By Portingals unto the world which whilon was unknowen,
Whereof the knowledge now at length thorow all the world is blowen.’
"And a little under he added:
"‘For the Authour or the Drawer.
"‘He, whose deare native soile bright stately Genua,
Even he whose name is Bartholomew Colon de Terra Rubra
The year of Grace a thousand and four hundred and four-score
And eight, and on the thirteenth day of February more,
In London published this worke. To Christ all laud therefore.’
“And because some peradventure may observe that he calleth himselfe
Columbus de Terra Rubra, I say, that in like maner I have seene some
subscriptions of my father Christopher Columbus, before he had the
degree of Admirall, wherein he signed his name thus, Columbus de Terra
Rubra. But to returne to the king of England, I say, that after he had
seen the map, and that which my father Christopher Columbus offered unto
him, he accepted the offer with joyfull countenance, and sent to call
him into England. But because God had reserved the sayd offer for
Castile, Columbus was gone in the meane space, and also returned with
the performance of his enterprise, as hereafter in order shall be
rehearsed. Now will I leave off from making any farther mention of that
which Bartholomew Colon had negotiated in England, and I will return
unto the Admirall, &c.”
(2)
"Another testimony taken out of the 60 chapter of the aforesayd
history of Ferdinando Columbus, concerning the offer that
Bartholemew Columbus made to King Henry the seventh on the
behalfe of his brother Christopher.
“Christopher Columbus the Admirall being returned from the discovery of
Cuba and Jamayca, found in Hispaniola his brother Bartholomew Columbus,
who before had beene sent to intreat of an agreement with the king of
England for the discovery of the Indies, as we have sayd before. This
Bartholomew therefore returning unto Castile, with the capitulations
granted by the king of England to his brother, understood at Paris by
Charles the king of France, that the Admirall his brother had already
performed that discovery: whereupon the French king gave unto the sayd
Bartholemew an hundred French crownes to beare his charges into Spaine.
And albeit he made great haste upon this good newes to meet with the
Admirall in Spaine, yet at his comming to Sevil his brother was already
returned to the Indies with seventeene saile of shipps. Wherefore to
fulfill that which he had left him in charge in the beginning of the
yeere 1494 he repaired to the Catholike princes, taking with him Diego
Colon my brother, and me also, which were to be preferred as Pages to
the most excellent Prince Don John, who now is with God, according to
the commandment of the Catholike Queene Lady Isabell, which was then in
Validolid. As soone therefore as we came to the Court, the princes
called for Don Bartholomew, and sent him to Hispaniola with three ships,
&c.”
The news of Columbus’ achievement filled all Europe with wonder and
admiration. To “sail by the West into the East where spices grow by a
way that was never known before” was affirmed “a thing more divine than
human.” Offering the promise of a direct route to Cathay, the feat was
of tremendous import. There was especially “great-talk of it” in the
English court with keen regret that England, through untoward
happenings, had failed of the honour and profit of the momentous
discovery, and Henry and his counsellors were eager to emulate Spain.
Although the full significance of the discovery was not then
realized—that the new-found islands were the barriers of a new
continent—no underestimate of the value of the region was made by either
nation. Ferdinand and Isabella gave it the name of the Indies,
considering it, with the discoverer, to be a part of India, and no time
was lost in clinching their rights. Nor were “their Catholic highnesses”
idle. In May, 1493, Pope Alexander the sixth granted his bull fixing a
“line of demarcation” between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions,
which was nothing less than a division of the world between Spain and
Portugal. This line was run from pole to pole and one hundred degrees
west of the Azores, and all newly discovered and to be discovered lands
on the east of the line were assigned to the absolute possession of the
crown of Portugal, those on the west to the crown of Castile. In 1494
Columbus made his second voyage and discovered, among other islands,
Porto Rico and Jamaica.
Meanwhile in the English maritime city of Bristol the Venetian merchant,
John Cabot (or Zuan Caboto in the Venetian dialect), then resident
there, had perfected his scheme of shortening the way to India by the
Northwest Passage, and in 1496, before Columbus’s return from his second
voyage, it had been proposed to King Henry, had met his hearty
approbation, had been endorsed by his letters patent issued to Cabot and
Cabot’s three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, and preparations for
the venture had begun.
VI
THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS
Henry’s patent, bearing date March 5, 1495/6, and distinguished as “the
most ancient American state paper of England,” gave to the grantees
sweeping powers and a pretty complete commercial monopoly. They were
authorized to sail in all seas to the East, the West, and the North; to
seek out in any part of the undiscovered world islands, countries, and
provinces of the heathen hitherto unknown to Christians; affix the
ensigns of England to all places newly found and take possession of them
for the English crown. They were to have the exclusive right of
frequenting the places of their discovery, and enjoy all the fruits and
gains of their navigations except a fifth part, which was to go to the
king. The sole restriction imposed was that on their return voyages they
should always land at the port of Bristol. With these generous
concessions, however, the canny king stipulated that the enterprise
should be wholly at the Cabots’ “own proper costs and charges.”
Hakluyt reproduces the text of this precious document in the first
volume of the _Principal Navigations_. It runs as follows:
"Henry by the grace of God, King of England and France, and lord of
Ireland, to all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting.
"Be it knowen that we have given and granted, and by these presents do
give and grant for us and our heires, to our welbeloved John Cabot
citizen of Venice, to Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, sonnes of the sayd
John, and to the heires of them, and every of them, and their deputies,
full and free authority, leave and power to saile to all parts,
countreys, and seas of the East, of the West, and of the North, under
our banners and ensignes, with five ships of what burthen or quantity
soever they be, and as many mariners or men as they will have with them
in the sayd ships, upon their owne proper costs and charges, to seeke
out, discover, and finde whatsoever isles, countreys, regions or
provinces of the heathen and infidels whatsoever they be, and in what
part of the world soever they be, which before this time have bene
unknowen to all Christians: we have granted to them, and also to every
of them, the heires of them, and every of them, and their deputies, and
have given this license to set up our banners and ensignes in every
village, towne, castle, isle, or mainland of them newly found. And that
the aforesayd John and his sonnes, or their heires and assignes may
subdue, occupy, and possesse all such townes, cities, castles and isles
of them found, which they can subdue, occupy, and possesse, as our
vassals, and lieutenants, getting unto us the rule, title, and
jurisdiction of the same villages, townes, castles, & firme land so
found.