Cabot, Bristol

For the sleepy island nation, this was a momentous step. Years later, about 1610 or 1611, during the reign of the first Stuart king, James I, William Shakespeare wrote what was probably his last play. Called The Tempest, it is about the beautiful young Miranda and her father-magician, who are exiled to an enchanted island across the ocean. Shakespeare drew much of his inspiration for this magical realm from reading contemporary accounts of the English voyages. There is one particular line in the play that seems to summarize the excitement of the “Age of Discovery” Henry VII had launched a little more than a century earlier. “0, brave new world…” it begins. Henry VII Backs an Italian Sailor Giovanni Caboto, born in Genoa about 1451 but a citizen of the seafaring city-state of Venice, finally settled in England with his family. A cartel of merchants in the seaport town of Bristol hired Caboto—whom they called John Cabot—to pioneer a direct route to the spice-rich Indies. The plan was logical and potentially highly lucrative ...»