: it was all in a good day's work.

Cabot settled in Bristol, where the still existing guild of
Merchant-Venturers was even then two centuries old. Columbus, writing of
his visit to Iceland, says, 'the English, _especially those of Bristol_,
go there with their merchandise.' Iceland was then what Newfoundland
became, the best of distant fishing grounds. It marked one end of the
line of English sea-borne commerce. The Levant marked the other. The
Baltic formed an important branch. Thus English trade already stretched
out over all the main lines. Long before Cabot's arrival a merchant
prince of Bristol, named Canyng, who employed a hundred artificers and
eight hundred seamen, was trading to Iceland, to the Baltic, and, most
of all, to the Mediterranean. The trade with Italian ports stood in high
favor among English merchants and was encouraged by the King; for in
1485, the first year of the Tudor dynasty, an English consul took office
at Pisa and England made a treaty of reciprocity with Tuscany.

Henry VII, first of the energetic Tudors and grandfather of Queen
Elizabeth, was a thrifty and practical man. Some years before the event
about to be recorded in these pages Columbus had sent him a trusted
brother with maps, globes, and quotations from Plato to prove the
existence of lands to the west. Henry had troubles of his own in
England. So he turned a deaf ear and lost a New World. But after
Columbus had found America, and the Pope had divided all heathen
countries between the crowns of Spain and Portugal, Henry decided to see
what he could do.

* * * * *

Anglo-American history begins on the 5th of March, 1496, when the
Cabots, father and three sons, received the following patent from the
King:

_Henrie, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of
Irelande, to all, to whom these presentes shall come, Greeting--Be it
knowen, that We have given and granted, and by these presentes do give
and grant for Us and Our Heyres, to our well beloved John Gabote,
citizen of Venice, to Lewes, Sebastian, and Santius, sonnes of the sayde
John, and to the heires of them and every of them, and their deputies,
full and free authoritie, leave, and Power, to sayle to all Partes,
Countreys, and Seas, of the East, of the West, and of the North, under
our banners and ensignes, with five shippes, of what burden or quantitie
soever they bee: and as many mariners or men as they will have with th