INTERNATIONAL DISCOVERIES II 



were Englishmen from Bristol, confirmed his story. The 

 companions declared that the sea there was so full of 

 fish, that they were taken in hampers each weighted with 

 a stone, and that England would no longer need Iceland, 

 whence the so-called "stochfissi" {sic) had hitherto come. 

 Cabot thought not of fish, but only of the spices of Japan 

 which he had seen at Mecca. The king granted him 

 a pension, and intended to give him "all the criminals", 

 wherewith he might found a factory or colony {colonia), by 

 means of which London would excel Alexandria as a spice- 

 market. Great Bristol mariners, who were at the head of the 

 undertaking, averred that they could with luck sail thither in 

 fifteen days. Cabot had already given islands to a barber, 

 and to a Burgundian, who called themselves Counts, while 

 Monsignor the Admiral gave himself the airs of a prince. 

 The writer might have obtained from him an archbishopric, 

 but preferred his present humble post as more secure '} At 

 the very same time a Scotch priest, who also hungered after 

 ecclesiastical preferment, wrote that 



' It micht have cummin in schortar quhyll 

 Era Calyecot and the new-fund Yle 

 The partie of Transmeridiane 

 Quhilk to considder is ane pane' 



But he too stayed at home.^ 



Another pause ensued, during which Pasqualigo and 

 Raimondi's pleasant gossipings, and De Puebla's whispered 

 confidences are hushed, and we are fain to munch dry bones 

 like the following. The king gave £io 'to him that found 

 the New Isle', August lo, 1497; ^ and an annual pension of 

 £20 to John Cabot, December 13, 1497, which pension was 

 drawn twice.* During March and April, 1498, the king 

 gave further sums, amounting to £72, to Launcelot Thirkill, 



- Reale Commissione Colombiana, Pt. Ill, vol. i, pp. 196-8. 



2 W. Dunbar, World's Instability. 



3 S. Bentley, Excerpta Historica, 1831, p. 113. 



* Customs' Roll of the Fort of Bristol^ 1496-9, edited by E. Scott, 

 A. E. Hudd, &c., and published in 1897. 



