Part 4
Five years later, in 1107, a “very great warlike fleet of the Catholic nation of England to the number of about seven thousand,” together with “more men of war of the kingdom of Denmark, of Flanders, and of Antwerp,” set sail in ships then called “busses”—small vessels carrying two masts, and with two cabins, one at each end—for the Holy Land. This body of warring zealots reached Joppa after a prosperous voyage, and thence, under a strong guard provided them by King Baldwin, passed to Jerusalem safely from all assaults and ambushes of the Gentiles. When they had solemnly offered up their vows in the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, they returned with great joy to Joppa, and were ready to fight for Baldwin in any venture he might propose against the enemy. Plans were formed to besiege a stronghold. But the move ended with an effective demonstration of the fleet in brave array, displaying “pendants and streams of purple and diverse other glorious colours, and flags of scarlet colour and silk.”
Near the end of this century, in 1190, came the “worthy voyage of Richard the first, king of England, into Asia for the recovery of Jerusalem out of the hands of the Saracens,” with which began the Third Crusade of the nine of history. This was that Richard, of restless zeal, surnamed “Ceur de Lion,” Henry the second’s son. After Henry’s death Richard, “remembering the rebellions that he had undutifully raised” against his father, “sought for absolution of his trespass.” And “in part of satisfaction for the same,” he agreed to make this crusade with Philip, the French king. Accordingly so soon as he was crowned he began his preparations. The first business was to raise a comfortable sum of money for the expedition. It was promptly accomplished by exacting “a tenth of the whole Realm, the Christians to make threescore and ten thousand pounds, and the Jews which then dwelt in the Realm threescore thousand.” At length his fleet was afloat, and he was off to join Philip of France. This Crusade occupied the first four years of Richard’s reign, and during it he made the conquest of Cyprus, won a great victory at Jaffa, marched on Jerusalem, concluded a truce with the sultan, Saladin, and slaughtered three thousand hostages when Saladin failed to come to time with an agreed-upon payment of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. The butchery of the hostages was performed on the summit of a hill that the tragedy might be in full view of Saladin’s camp. On his homeward journey he was shipwrecked, and he was long imprisoned in Germany. Hakluyt’s version of this Crusade is a detailed account “drawn out of the Book of _Actes and Monuments_ of the Church of England written by M. John Foxe,” more popularly known as Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_. Richard’s code of laws and ordinances for the government of his crusading fleet, well illustrates at once the rigour of the discipline and the character of the British sailor of that day. It also discloses the antiquity of the method of punishment by tar-and-feathering:
"1. That who so killed any person on shipboord should be tied with him that was slaine and throwen into the sea.
"2. And if he killed him on the land, he should in like maner be tied with the partie slaine, and be buried with him in the earth.
"3. He that shalbe convicted by lawfull witnes to draw out his knife or weapon to the intent to strike any man, or that hath striken any to the drawing of blood shall loose his hand.
"4. Also he that striketh any person with his hand without effusion of blood, shall be plunged three times in the sea.
"5. Item, who so speaketh any opprobrious or contumelious wordes in reviling or cursing one another, for so oftentimes as he hath reviled shall pay so many ounces of silver.
“6. Item, a thiefe or felon that hath stollen being lawfully convicted, shal have his head shorne and boyling pitch powred upon his head, and feathers or downe strawed upon the same, whereby he may be knowen, and so at the first landing place they shall come to, there to be cast up.”
In the Crusades of the thirteenth century we have notes on the expeditions of the “Knights of Jerusalem” against the Saracens: in brief recitals of the voyages of Ranulph, earl of Chester, sent out by Henry the third in 1218, with “Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester, William de Albanie, earl of Arundel, besides divers barons,” and “a goodly company of soldiers and men at arms”; and of Richard, earl of Cornwall, Henry the third’s brother (and afterward king of the Romans), accompanied by William Longespee, earl of “Sarisburie” (Salisbury) and other nobles “for their valiancy greatly renowned,” and “a great number of Christian soldiers,” in 1240, beginning the Seventh Crusade. In 1248 Longespee—or Longsword, as his fellow-knights called him for his prowess—made a second voyage and lost his life in a battle with the Saracens. Finally, in 1270, Henry the third’s son, Prince Edward, and other young nobles, having “taken upon them the cross,” at the hand of the Pope’s legate then in England, “to the relief of the Holy Land and the subversion of the enemies of Christ,” sailed out with a gallant war fleet. They landed at Acre, and thence the prince, with an army of six or seven thousand soldiers, marched upon Nazareth. This he took, and “those that he found there he slew.” Other victories followed with much slaughter of Saracens. At length the triumphant prince fell ill at Acre, and during his sickness a plot was concocted by the emir of Joppa to remove him by assassination. This failed, the prince thwarting the scheme by himself killing the emir’s messenger just as the treacherous dagger was to be thrust into his bosom. Shortly after he concluded a peace for ten years and returned to England, to be crowned king upon his father’s death.
Edward’s was the last exploit of Englishmen in the Crusades, and it closed the last one. Attempts were made at subsequent periods to revive the flame, but these resulted only in flares of short duration. A shining one for a moment was kindled by King Henry the fourth in 1413. It flashed out with his sudden death at Westminster while the ships and galleys for the proposed voyage were building.
[Illustration: “THE GREAT HARRY,” AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
At this time the competition for trade advantages in the east and northeast were becoming of larger import to England. A half-century earlier, in 1360, in Edward the third’s reign, a Franciscan friar, mathematician, and astronomer, Nicholas de Linna, of Oxford, had made a voyage into the north parts, “all the regions situated under the North-pole,” had taken valuable observations, and had reported his discoveries to Edward with a description of the northern islands. In 1390 Henry, earl of Derby, afterward King Henry the fourth, made a voyage into Prussia; and the next year the duke of Gloucester, Edward the third’s youngest son, also penetrated Prussia. As early as 1344 the island of Madeira had been discovered by an Englishman, and sometime occupied. The latter, however, was not a commercial discovery, but a romantic one, and England at the time, and for long after, was not aware of it. Hakluyt takes the story from a Portuguese history. It was regarded by most later historians as apocryphal, but its genuineness has been finally demonstrated through the historical researches of the English geographer, R. H. Major. It runs in this wise. The discoverer was one Robert Macham, when fleeing from England to France with his stolen bride, Anna d’Arfet. His ship was tempest-tossed out of its course and cast toward this island. He anchored in a haven (which years afterward was named Macham in memory of him) and landed on the island with his lady and the ship’s company. Soon with a fair wind the ship and part of the company “made sail away.” After a while the young woman died “from thought,” perhaps homesickness; and Macham built a tomb for her upon which he inscribed their names, and “the occasion of their arrival there.” Then he ordered a boat made of a single great tree, and when it was done, he put to sea with his few companions that were left. At length they came upon the coast of Afrike (Africa) without sail or oar. “And the Moors which saw it took it to be a marvellous thing and presented him unto the king of that country for a wonder, and that king also sent him and his companions for a miracle unto the king of Spain.”
With the opening of the fifteenth century, Portugal was pressing forward for a share with the maritime states of Italy, Genoa, and Venice in the rich eastern traffic. In 1410 Prince Henry, “the Navigator,” had begun his systematic explorations. A younger son of the Portuguese king John the first, and a grandson of Edward the third of England, born at the close of the fourteenth century (in 1394), after gaining renown as a soldier, he turned to loftier aims and became one of the first astronomers, mathematicians, cartographers, and directors of maritime discoveries in his time. He was the first to conceive the idea of cutting a way out through the unexplored ocean. His superb genius gave the inspiration to marvellous results in the discovery of more than half the globe within the cycle of a century. At the age of twenty-four the hope was born in him of reaching India by the south point of Africa, and thereafter to this end his speculations and studies were ardently directed. The earliest expeditions sent out by him failed of results, and his theories were ridiculed by his fellow-nobles. At length, however, in 1419 and 1420, the Madeira Islands, Porto Santo and Madeira, were rediscovered by his navigators. A little more than a decade later, in 1433, they had rounded Cape Bojador. In 1435 the prince’s cup-bearer had passed beyond that cape. In 1443 another of his navigators had sailed beyond Cape Blanco. The next year Pope Martin the fifth, by a Papal Bull, declared Portugal in possession of all the lands her mariners had visited as far as the Indies. In 1445 the mouth of the Senegal and afterward Cape Verde were reached. Prince Henry died in 1460, but the work he had begun continued, after a temporary check, to be carried forward. In 1469 Portuguese trade was opened with the Gold Coast. In 1484 the mouth of the Congo was discovered. In 1486 Bartholomew Dias doubled the Cape of Good Hope.
Meanwhile these wondrous advances of Portugal were stimulating other maritime nations to the quest for new passages to India.
V QUEST FOR THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Portugal now had practically a monopoly of the traffic with the Orient, and the finding of new paths to India by her maritime rivals was essential in the struggle for commercial supremacy. A passage by way of “Cathay” had the most powerful attractions.
“Great Cathay,” the marvellous empire of the remote East, whence travellers had brought wonderful tales in the latter Middle Ages, had become the ultimate goal of adventurous voyages. The hazy region was the “extremity of the habitable world” of the ancients. Early Christian fancy had identified within it the Earthly Paradise, the seat of the old “Garden of Eden,” beyond the Ocean stream, “raised so high on a triple terrace of mountain that the deluge did not touch it.” Under the name of Cathay the strange empire had been opened to the speculation of mediæval Europe in the thirteenth century, with the vast conquest of the Mongol Genghis Khan, reckoned in history one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever seen.
Two Franciscan friars—John de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruk (Rubruquis) in French Flanders, who reached the court in Mongolia, the former in 1245 or 1246, the latter in 1247 or 1253—appear to have been the first Europeans to approach its borders. They saw the Cathayans in the bazaars of their Great Khan’s camps, and brought back to Europe the first accounts of the people and of the wonderful things seen, presented in their journals of their adventures. Both of these “rare jewels,” as he appreciatively terms them, Hakluyt found at London in manuscripts while delving in Lord Lumley’s library, and he printed them in full in the second edition of the _Principal Navigations_. After the friars two Venetians penetrated the empire, the first European travellers to visit Cathay itself. These were the brothers Nicolo and Maffei Polo, members of a noble trading family of Venice. They were there for a short time in or about the year 1269. Soon afterward they made a second visit, when Marco, the son of Nicolo, then a youth of seventeen, quick-witted, open-eyed, and observant, accompanied them. This visit extended through more than twenty years, the three Venetians basking in the sunshine of the Great Khan’s favour. The elders helped the Khan with suggestions for the profitable application of the knowledge of the West which they opened to him, while Marco’s cleverness was variously employed in his service; sometimes as a commissioner attached to the Imperial council, at others on distant missions, and at one period a governor of a great city. Marco’s recollections, given to the world long after the final return of the Polos to Venice, first made the name of Cathay familiar to Europe. These recollections were taken down from his lips by one Rusticiano of Pisa, a clever literary hack, who was shut up in prison with him for a year (the two having been among the captives taken by the Genoese in a sea-fight with the Venetians in 1298), and formed the basis of the book of marvellous adventures, subsequently published in various languages and varying texts, which came to be famous as the _Voyages and Travels of Marco Polo_. From this Hakluyt also gives copious extracts.
Commercial intercourse of adventuresome European traders began with the region in the early fourteenth century, and continued fairly to flourish for about fifty years. Then, with changes in dynasties and tribal wars, the ways of approach were closed and it fell again into darkness. It was long supposed to be a separate country, distinct from the Indies, lying to the north of what we now know as China, and stretching to the Arctic sea. It was not until 1603 (after the publication of the final volume of the _Principal Navigations_) that it was found to be identical with the then vaguely known empire of China, of which similar marvels had for some time been recited. Its identity was the discovery by a lay Jesuit, Benedict Goës, sent out through Central Asia by his superiors in India for the specific object of determining whether Cathay and China were or were not separate empires. Goës died upon the completion of his mission, at Suhchow, the frontier city of China.
Cathay was the aim of Columbus. He was possessed by the conviction that the fabled riches of this wondrous region lay directly across the trackless Atlantic “over against” the coast of Spain. Believing the world to be a sphere, he conceived his design of reaching Asia by sailing west. This was the project that he carried for weary years from court to court, seeking the patronage of a favouring prince.
But for a mischance England, instead of Spain, would have had the glory and the advantage of his first discovery of 1492. Hakluyt recalls the circumstances in these two “testimonies”:
(1)
"The offer of the discovery of the West Indies by Christopher Columbus to king Henry the seventh in the yeere 1488 the 13 of February: with the kings acceptation of the offer, & the cause whereupon he was deprived of the same: recorded in the thirteenth chapter of the history of Don Fernand Columbus of the life and deeds of his father Christopher Columbus.
"Christopher Columbus fearing least if the king of Castile in like maner (as the king of Portugall had done) should not condescend unto his enterprise, he should be enforced to offer the same againe to some other prince, & so much time should be spent therein, sent into England a certaine brother of his which he had with him, whose name was Bartholomew Columbus, who albeit he had not the Latine tongue, yet neverthelesse was a man of experience and skilfull in Sea causes, and could very wel make sea cards & globes and other instruments belonging to that profession, as he was instructed by his brother. Wherefore after that Bartholomew Columbus was departed for England his lucke was to fall into the hands of pirats, which spoiled him with the rest of them which were in the ship which he went in. Upon which occasion, and by reason of his poverty and sicknesse which cruelly assaulted him in a countrey so farre distant from his friends, he deferred his ambassage for a long while, untill such time as he had gotten somewhat handsome about him with making of Sea cards. At length he began to deale with king Henry the seventh the father of Henry the eight which reigneth at this present: unto whom he presented a mappe of the world, wherein these verses were written, which I found among his papers: and I will here set them downe rather for their antiquity than for their goodnesse:
"‘Thou which desirest easily the coasts of lands to know, This comely mappe right learnedly the same to thee will shew: Which Strabo, Plinie, Ptolomew and Isodore maintaine: Yet for all that they do not all in one accord remaine. Here also to set downe the late discovered burning Zone By Portingals unto the world which whilon was unknowen, Whereof the knowledge now at length thorow all the world is blowen.’
"And a little under he added:
"‘For the Authour or the Drawer.
"‘He, whose deare native soile bright stately Genua, Even he whose name is Bartholomew Colon de Terra Rubra The year of Grace a thousand and four hundred and four-score And eight, and on the thirteenth day of February more, In London published this worke. To Christ all laud therefore.’
“And because some peradventure may observe that he calleth himselfe Columbus de Terra Rubra, I say, that in like maner I have seene some subscriptions of my father Christopher Columbus, before he had the degree of Admirall, wherein he signed his name thus, Columbus de Terra Rubra. But to returne to the king of England, I say, that after he had seen the map, and that which my father Christopher Columbus offered unto him, he accepted the offer with joyfull countenance, and sent to call him into England. But because God had reserved the sayd offer for Castile, Columbus was gone in the meane space, and also returned with the performance of his enterprise, as hereafter in order shall be rehearsed. Now will I leave off from making any farther mention of that which Bartholomew Colon had negotiated in England, and I will return unto the Admirall, &c.”
(2)
"Another testimony taken out of the 60 chapter of the aforesayd history of Ferdinando Columbus, concerning the offer that Bartholemew Columbus made to King Henry the seventh on the behalfe of his brother Christopher.
“Christopher Columbus the Admirall being returned from the discovery of Cuba and Jamayca, found in Hispaniola his brother Bartholomew Columbus, who before had beene sent to intreat of an agreement with the king of England for the discovery of the Indies, as we have sayd before. This Bartholomew therefore returning unto Castile, with the capitulations granted by the king of England to his brother, understood at Paris by Charles the king of France, that the Admirall his brother had already performed that discovery: whereupon the French king gave unto the sayd Bartholemew an hundred French crownes to beare his charges into Spaine. And albeit he made great haste upon this good newes to meet with the Admirall in Spaine, yet at his comming to Sevil his brother was already returned to the Indies with seventeene saile of shipps. Wherefore to fulfill that which he had left him in charge in the beginning of the yeere 1494 he repaired to the Catholike princes, taking with him Diego Colon my brother, and me also, which were to be preferred as Pages to the most excellent Prince Don John, who now is with God, according to the commandment of the Catholike Queene Lady Isabell, which was then in Validolid. As soone therefore as we came to the Court, the princes called for Don Bartholomew, and sent him to Hispaniola with three ships, &c.”
The news of Columbus’ achievement filled all Europe with wonder and admiration. To “sail by the West into the East where spices grow by a way that was never known before” was affirmed “a thing more divine than human.” Offering the promise of a direct route to Cathay, the feat was of tremendous import. There was especially “great-talk of it” in the English court with keen regret that England, through untoward happenings, had failed of the honour and profit of the momentous discovery, and Henry and his counsellors were eager to emulate Spain. Although the full significance of the discovery was not then realized—that the new-found islands were the barriers of a new continent—no underestimate of the value of the region was made by either nation. Ferdinand and Isabella gave it the name of the Indies, considering it, with the discoverer, to be a part of India, and no time was lost in clinching their rights. Nor were “their Catholic highnesses” idle. In May, 1493, Pope Alexander the sixth granted his bull fixing a “line of demarcation” between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions, which was nothing less than a division of the world between Spain and Portugal. This line was run from pole to pole and one hundred degrees west of the Azores, and all newly discovered and to be discovered lands on the east of the line were assigned to the absolute possession of the crown of Portugal, those on the west to the crown of Castile. In 1494 Columbus made his second voyage and discovered, among other islands, Porto Rico and Jamaica.
Meanwhile in the English maritime city of Bristol the Venetian merchant, John Cabot (or Zuan Caboto in the Venetian dialect), then resident there, had perfected his scheme of shortening the way to India by the Northwest Passage, and in 1496, before Columbus’s return from his second voyage, it had been proposed to King Henry, had met his hearty approbation, had been endorsed by his letters patent issued to Cabot and Cabot’s three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Santius, and preparations for the venture had begun.
VI THE VOYAGES OF THE CABOTS
Henry’s patent, bearing date March 5, 1495/6, and distinguished as “the most ancient American state paper of England,” gave to the grantees sweeping powers and a pretty complete commercial monopoly. They were authorized to sail in all seas to the East, the West, and the North; to seek out in any part of the undiscovered world islands, countries, and provinces of the heathen hitherto unknown to Christians; affix the ensigns of England to all places newly found and take possession of them for the English crown. They were to have the exclusive right of frequenting the places of their discovery, and enjoy all the fruits and gains of their navigations except a fifth part, which was to go to the king. The sole restriction imposed was that on their return voyages they should always land at the port of Bristol. With these generous concessions, however, the canny king stipulated that the enterprise should be wholly at the Cabots’ “own proper costs and charges.”