[thachbr] the CABOTIAN DISCOVERY 287 



that John Cabot, if he was " another Genoese " like Columbus, was not 

 impecunious like Columbus, and wo can understand that he had a right 

 upon his return from the new world, to dress in purple and fine linen — 

 also probabl}' " at his own proper costs and charges." 



Another important fact learned from this document is that the 

 expedition was limited in its powers of discovery ; it was authorized to 

 sail to the " East, the West, the North ; to seek out, discover and finde 

 whatsoever isles, countries, regions or provinces of the heathen and in- 

 fidels whatsoever they be, and in what part of the world soever they be, 

 which before this time have been unknowne to all Christians." It might 

 not sail to countries whither Spain had been. It might not find regions 

 to which Portugal had gone before. It had no warrant to go to the 

 South. Thus, in a royal grant, did King Henry accept the principles 

 already announced, and which had already become a law of the nations, 

 that discovery of new territory by a Christian people gave a title which 

 -another Christian people must observe and honour. This document reveals 

 to us the very fabric of the dream which the Venetian wove for the king. 

 The expedition is to set up the king's bannei's and ensigns in every 

 town, city and castle. What did Cabot and the king think to find in the 

 heathen lands? They were drawn by the same load stone which had 

 drawn Columbus. They looked for the islands of the Blessed, for the 

 island of the good St. Brandon, for the Seven Cities, for Cathay, for towns 

 with streets of gold and battlements of shining metal, for precious stones, 

 for costly silks, for rarest spices. They sought the kingdom of the Grand 

 Cham. John Cabot had once been to Mecca, if what he told was truth, 

 and in the far east he had seen innumerable caravans returning from a 

 further east, and the tales that were told were like the spices they boi'e, 

 fragrant with a strange perfume. Cabot was a Venetian, and he might 

 have told the king that for two hundred yeai-s the children of Venice 

 had heard the wondrous story of how one day there came back to Venice 

 three men who had been gone long years and had returned from the 

 province of the Great Cham, and how these men were in rags and in 

 a])parent sore distress, and, then, how having won the pity of their friends 

 and neighbours, they took knives and sharp daggers and tore away the 

 seams of their frayed garments, letting fall upon the floor diamonds and 

 pearls, emeralds, sapphires and rubies, until the richest Venetian stood 

 poor before them. And the king remembered in the days before he 

 went to war, that he too had read of Marco Polo and of his father and of 

 his uncle. A king hath an appetite and a longing, even as hath a man 

 without a sceptre, and King Henry was hungry and avaricious beyond 

 any of England's kings. Cabot found a new land, but he found neither 

 castle nor city ; and if there was prophecy in the dream of the king, it was 

 not to be fulfilled in far Cathay. 



There is one more item of interest in this document of the errant. 

 -John Cabot and his sons were to "be holden and bounden of all the 



