Notes to Introduction

Summary

A., B.

The questions to which, these two notes refer have been made the subjects of special investigation, by the writer of the present pages, whilst the book was going through the press, and by a new and more accurate examination of the original documents he has been induced to modify very considerably the opinions expressed in the text. The following are the principal new views he has arrived at:

1. That Sebastian Cabot was born in Venice, not in Bristol; that he arrived in England with his father when a child, and lived here till he went out on his voyages.

2. That the voyages of the Scandinavians exercised no perceptible influence upon John and Sebastian's opinions.

3. That John Cabot died most probably shortly after his son's second departure.

4. That the discovery of Hudson's Strait in 1496 must be concluded from Galvano's account, not from the spurious one of Willes.

The editor is now preparing for the press a memoir on the north-western voyages of the Cabots, in which these matters will be more clearly explained than could be done in the short space here afforded. The notes on Cabot's map will be found in the bibliographical list, under Cabot.