News / University of Bristol
New evidence uncovered of early Bristol voyages to North America
Hidden deep within centuries-old rolls of parchment and only legible by using ultra-violet light, historians from the University of Bristol have uncovered compelling new evidence concerning the first English-led expedition to North America in 1499.
Nine years ago, Dr Evan Jones from the university’s Department of History, published a long-lost letter from King Henry VII which revealed that William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was preparing an expedition to the “new found land” with the King’s support.
His venture was just a year after Christopher Columbus first landed on the mainland of South America and two years after the Venetian explorer, John Cabot, reached North America from Bristol.
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Weston’s expedition was probably undertaken under the royal patent issued to Cabot in 1496. But what happened afterwards was unclear.
Now Dr Jones and Margaret Condon, from the University of Bristol-led Cabot Project, have discovered that Weston received a £30 reward from the king in 1500 as a contribution to the merchant’s expenses for his exploration of ‘nova terra’ (the ‘new land’).
The reward was equivalent to about six years’ pay for an ordinary labourer, suggesting that the king was pleased with the outcome.
The key entry was a result of Condon’s painstaking detective work, trawling through official tax records. Each of the accounts take the form of a huge parchment roll, made from the skin of more than 200 sheep.
Each ‘membrane’ in this roll is two metres long, while the note itself was so faint it is only legible under ultra violet light.
Condon said that the first time he read the roll, he almost missed it. He said: “These rolls are beasts to deal with, but also precious and irreplaceable documents.
“Handling them, it sometimes feels like you’re wrestling, very gently, with an obstreperous baby elephant!”
Writing on the parchment could only be seen under UV light. It reads: “Videlicet xxx li ultra feodum et habeantur pro eisdem xxx li talliam pro W Weston mercatore Bristoll’ pro expensis suis circa inuencionem noue terre.” A literal translation of this is: “Namely £30 above the fee [of the customers] and let them have for the said £30 a tally for W[illiam] Weston, merchant of Bristol, for his expenses about the finding of the new land.”
Weston was probably one of the unnamed ‘great seamen’ from Bristol discussed by Italian diplomats and merchants in the winter of 1497/8.
Letters the Italians sent back home from London confirm that Cabot had Bristol companions on his 1497 expedition and claim that his supporters from the port were ‘the leading men’ behind the 1498 expedition.
The outcome of Cabot’s final expedition in 1498 is unknown, and it is unclear whether any of the ships returned. That may explain King Henry’s willingness to send out another expedition the following year, led by one of Cabot’s deputies.
Dr Jones said: “Finding this new evidence is wonderful! What’s amazing about these early Bristol voyages is how little we’ve ever known about them.
“Cabot’s voyages have been famous since Elizabethan times and were used to justify England’s later colonisation of North America.
“But we’ve never known the identity of his English supporters. Until recently, we didn’t even know that there was an expedition in 1499.”
Other evidence found by the Bristol researchers fill out Weston’s life. “He was a bit of a gambler,” said Condon. “But then so was Cabot. Perhaps you had to be, to risk your life on such a dangerous voyage into unknown seas.”
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