[Footnote 18:  Hakluyt, id. ib.  Supposing Sebastian to have been sixteen years of age in 1495, when he appears to have come to England with his father, he must have attained to seventy years of age at the period of this grant—­E.]

[Footnote 19:  At the rate of six for one, as established by the Historian of America for comparing sums of money between these two periods, this pension was equal to L.1000 in our time.—­E.]

SECTION IX.

Voyage of Sir Thomas Pert and Sebastian Cabot about the year 1516, to Brazil, St Domingo, and Porto Rico.

That learned and painefull writer Richard Eden, in a certain epistle of his to the Duke of Northumberland, before a work which he translated out of Munster in 1553, called A Treatise of New India, maketh mention of a voyage of discoverie undertaken out of England by Sir Thomas Pert and Sebastian Cabota, about the eighth year of Henry VIII. of famous memorie, imputing the overthrow thereof unto the cowardice and want of stomack of the said Sir Thomas Pert, in manner following: 

If manly courage, saith he, (like unto that which hath bene seene and proved in your Grace, as well in forreine realmes, as also in this our country) had not bene wanting in others in these our dayes, at such time as our souereigne lord of famous memorie king Henry VIII. about the same yeere of his raigne, furnished and sent out certaine shippes under the governance of Sebastian Cabot yet living, and one Sir Thomas Pert, who was vice-admiral of England and dweleth in Poplar at Blackwall, whose faint heart was the cause that the voyage took none effect.  If, I say, such manly courage, whereof we have spoken, had not at that time beene wanting, it might happily have come to passe, that that rich treasurie called Perularia, (which is nowe in Spaine in the citie of Seville, and so named, for that in it is kept the infinite riches brought thither from the newfoundland kingdom of Peru) might long since have beene in the tower of London, to the kings great honour and the wealth of this realme.

Hereunto that also is to bee referred which the worshipfull Mr Robert Thorne wrote to the saide king Henry VIII. in the yeere 1527, by Doctor Leigh his ambassador sent into Spaine to the Emperour Charles V. whose worries bee these: 

Now rest to be discovered the north parts, the which it seemeth unto me is onely your highnes charge and dutie; because the situation of this your realme is thereunto neerest and aptest of all other:  and also, for that already you have taken it in hand.  And in mine opinion it will not seeme well to leave so great and profitable an enterprise, seeing it may so easily and with so little cost, labour, and danger be followed and obteined.  Though hitherto your grace have made thereof a proofe, and found not the commoditie thereby as you trusted, at this time it shal be none impediment:  for there may be now