EXPEDITION OF HORE 23 
the value of the discovery; he urges that by sailing northward, 
and passing the Pole, the navigation from England to the Spice 
Islands, would be shorter by more than two thousand leagues, than 
either from Spain by the Straits of Magellan, (the navigation of 
which however was very little known, as they had been only 
discovered a few months before Thorne memorialized the king,) or 
Portugal by the Cape of Good Hope, and further to shew the like¬ 
lihood of success in the enterprise, he says, it is as probable, that 
the cosmographers should be mistaken, in the opinion they enter¬ 
tain of the Polar Regions being impassable from extreme cold, as 
it has been found, they were, in supposing the countries under the 
line, to be uninhabitable from excessive heat. With all the spirit 
of the confirmed enthusiast, convinced of the glory to be gained, 
and the probability of success in the undertaking, he adds; “God 
knoweth, that though by it I should have no great interest, yet I 
have had, and still have no little mind of this business, so that 
if I had faculty to my will, it should be the first thing that I 
would understand, even to attempt, if our seas northward be 
navigable to the Pole or no.” 
The uxorious Henry was at first too much occupied with 
Wolsey, women, and wine, to pay any attention to the memorial 
of the Bristol merchant, at length, however a voyage was deter¬ 
mined upon, “ and two fair ships were equipped, well manned 
and victualled, having in them divers cunning men to seek 
strange regions, and so they set forth out of the Thames, the 
20th day of May, in the nineteenth year of his reign, which 
was the year of our Lord 1527.” All that we know of the result 
of this voyage, is, that one of the ships was cast away on the 
north of Newfoundland, and no record remains of what became 
pf the other. 
In 1536 another voyage of discovery to the north west parts 
of America, was projected by Master Hore of London, “ a man 
of goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie 
of cosmographie.” It is remarkable that of 120 persons who 
accompanied him, thirty were gentlemen of the Inns of Court 
and Chancery , whence it may be concluded, that the pursuit of 
science, and gratification of a laudable curiosity were the objects 
