favour of the Portuguese from trading to the East Indies, that they might endeavour to elude this authority by employing Englishmen in that navigation.  However this may have been, Joam or John II. king of Portugal, sent two persons on an embassy to Edward king of England, to renew the ancient league of friendship between the crowns, and to move him to hinder that fleet from putting to sea.  The Portuguese ambassadors had orders to acquaint the king of England with the title which the king of Portugal derived from the Pope, to the exclusive sovereignty and navigation of Guinea, and to demand that Edward should prohibit his subjects from sending any ships to that country.  This was accordingly done, and the purposes of that intended voyage were frustrated.  This is an authentic testimony of the early attempts of the English, which is related at length by Garcia de Resende, in the life of Joam II.  Ch. 33[177].  To this, or some similar circumstance, it may have been owing that the English desisted so long from sailing to the southwards, and turned their endeavours to the discovery of a passage to India by some other way.

[Footnote 176:  The French pretend to have traded with Guinea from 1364 till 1413, being 107 years before it was discovered by the Portuguese.—­Astl.  I. 138, a.]

[Footnote 177:  Cited by Hakluyt, Vol.  II.  Part 2. p. 2]

“It appears by a memorandum or letter of Nicholas Thorn, senior, a considerable merchant in Bristol, of which Hakluyt gives the contents[178], that in 1526, and from circumstances for a long time previous, certain English merchants, among whom were Nicholas Thorn and Thomas Spacheford, had frequently traded to the Canary islands.  In that letter or memorandum, notice was given to Thomas Midnal his factor and William Ballard his servant; residing in St Lucar in Andalusia, that the Christopher of Cadiz bound for the West Indies, had taken on board several packs of cloth of different fineness and colours, together with packthread, soap, and other goods, to be landed at Santa Cruz in Teneriffe.  They are directed to sell these goods, and to send back returns in Orchil[179], sugar, and kid skins.

[Footnote 178:  Id. ib. p. 3.]

[Footnote 179:  A species of moss growing on high rocks, much used in these days in dying.—­Astl.  I. 138. d.]

“At length, about the middle of the sixteenth century, the English spirit of trade, meeting with favourable circumstances, began to exert itself, and to extend its adventures to the south as well as the north.  About the year 1551, Captain Thomas Windham sailed in the ship Lion for Morocco, whither he carried two Moors of the blood-royal.  This was the first voyage to the western coast of Africa of which we have any account, and these are all the particulars to be found respecting it; except that one Thomas Alday, a servant to Sebastian Cabot, in a letter inserted