1553-1555.] The Muscovy Company and its Work. 101 and the long delay consequent on his visit to Moscow, induced him to abandon for the present any further voyaging to the east, and to go home at once with the letter of friendship to Edward VI. that had been entrusted to him by the Emperor, and with many substantial proofs of the good work he had done. The loss of Willoughby and two of the three ships sent with him, and Chancelor's success in Russia, induced the Merchant Adventurers who had fitted out the expedition to alter their purposes. "The discovery of regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown,” was given up, and the association became, by a charter of Queen Mary, dated February, 1555, "The Fellowship of English Merchants for Discovery of New Trades," afterwards better known as The Muscovy or Russia Company. Nearly every year one or more expeditions, important from a commercial point of view, were despatched, and work of geographical importance was done in exploration of the northern coast of Russia. The most memorable of these was a voyage made by Stephen Burrough, who had been master of the Edward Bonaventure under Willoughby, and who was now captain of the Searchthrift, for discovery in the direction of the river Oby. He examined the southern parts of Nova Zembla, and went very near to the mouth of the Oby, when the impenetrable ice drove him back. In 1580, Arthur Pet, another of Willoughby's followers, visited the same regions, and was driven back by the * CLEMENT ADAMS, cited by EDEN; also in HAKLUYT, same cause. After that, no noteworthy attempt at finding a north-eastern passage to the Indies was attempted by Englishmen under the Tudors. Richard Chancelor made one other journey to Russia. Returning to England in November, 1556, with the first Russian ambassador to the English court for his passenger, his ship, the same Edward Bonaventure in which he had made his first voyage, was driven ashore by a storm at Pitsligo, in the north of Scotland, and there dashed in pieces among the rocks. Chancelor, "using all carefulness for the safety of the body of the ambassador and his train," placed the foreigners in the ship's boat as soon as the wreck appeared imminent, and sought to convey them at once to land. But, says the chronicler, "the same boat, by rigorous waves of the seas, was by dark night overwhelmed and drowned, wherein perished not only the body of the said Grand Pilot, with seven Russes, but also divers of the mariners of the ship; the noble personage of the ambassador, with a few others, by God's preservation and special favour, only with much difficulty saved."* So that, after all, Chancelor's "two little sons" were "in the case of orphans." Sebastian Cabot did not long survive his young disciple. At the institution of the Muscovy Company, he was appointed its Governor for life, as being "the chiefest setter forth of the enterprise;" and Stephen Burrough, in his account of his voyage in the Searchthrift, tells how " "the good old gentleman, Master * HAKLUYT, vol. i., p. 286. 1556-1557.] Sebastian Cabot's Last Work. 103 Cabot, accompanied with divers gentlemen and gentlewomen," went to Gravesend to inspect the ship previous to its departure. "Master Cabot," adds Burrough, "gave to the poor most liberal alms, wishing them to pray for the good fortune and prosperous success of the Searchthrift; and then, at the sign of the Christopher, he and his friends banqueted, and made me and them hat were in the company great cheer; and, for very joy that he had to see the towardness of our intended discovery, he entered into the dance himself among the rest of the young and lusty company; which being ended, he and his friends departed, most gently commending us to the governance of Almighty God." * With that pleasant view of Cabot giving alms and dancing, at the age of eighty-four, to show his sympathy with the adventurers in that work of arctic discovery to which his long life had been devoted, we almost lose sight of him. He appears never to have been in favour with Queen Mary and her Spanish husband, who owed him an old grudge for withdrawing himself from the service of Spain; and it is supposed to have been in an outburst of royal spite that he was forced, on the 27th of May, 1557, to resign his appointment as Grand Pilot of England,† and only allowed two days afterwards to resume it in partnership with a William Worthington. Cabot's old age may have been sufficient reason for this change; but friends of English enterprise declared that in Worthington's ap * HAKLUYT, vol. i., p. 274. † RYMER, Fœdera, vol. xv., p. 427. Ibid., pointment the office of Grand Pilot, "to the great hindrance of the commonwealth, was miserably turned to private uses. Posterity, at any rate, owes no gratitude to William Worthington. He seems to have done nothing in the interests of commerce and navigation; and by him, or those to whom he confided them, were lost all the charts and documents, in illustration of his own and other men's voyages of discovery which Cabot had been collecting for sixty years. † Our last view of Cabot, eminently characteristic of the man, is on his death-bed. During his last hours, we are told, the thoughts and wishes that had been with him all through life were as strong as ever. He talked flightily to his friend Richard Eden about a divine revelation made to him as to an infallible way of finding the longitude of any place, which he was not allowed to disclose to the world; and then he died, certainly not less than eighty-five years old. Concerning the date and place of his death we have no information. In the turmoil of religious persecution he and his cherished projects were almost forgotten. But the projects were revived under the better rule of Queen Elizabeth, and suggested a field for the exercise of that adventurous spirit for which, above all others, her reign is famous. *HAKLUYT, Vol. i., Dedication. † BIDDLE, p. 221. EDEN, Epistle Dedicatory to his translation of A Very Necessary and Profitable Book concerning Navigation by JOANNES TAISNERUS, cited by BIDDLE. CHAPTER V. THE PROMOTERS OF CATHAYAN ENTERPRISE UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. [1558-1575.] WITHIN the limits of Sebastian Cabot's lifetime is comprised all the first period of American discovery. As a young man he heard of the memorable voyage by which Columbus, going out in search of the fabled riches of Cathay, opened the way to a new world of substantial wealth. Five years later he himself took part in the hardly less memorable voyage conducted by his father, also in quest of Cathay, which issued in the first landing of civilized Europeans upon the solid continent of America. In many later enterprises, moreover, he was personally engaged, and in every one of the hundreds of others that were led by other adventurers he took a lively interest. Those which had for their object or their consequence the discovery and colonization, by Spaniards, Germans, and Portuguese, of the central and southern districts of America do not here concern us. Those in which Englishmen attempted a passage to the Indies through the seas north of America we have already reviewed. But there were a few foreign enterprises in the direction indicated by the |