Many years passed before the claim of England was heard of any more. The stormy life of Henry came to its close. His son, around whose throne there surged the disturbing influences of the Reformation, and who was obliged in this anxious time to readjust the ecclesiastical relations of himself and of his people, had no thought to spare for those distant and unknown regions. The fierce Mary was absorbed in the congenial employment of trampling out Protestantism by the slaughter of its followers. The America upon which John Cabot--now an almost forgotten name--had looked fourscore years before, was nearly as much forgotten as its discoverer. But during the more tranquil reign of Elizabeth there began that search for a north-west route to the East which Europe has prosecuted from that time till now with marvellous persistence and intrepidity. [Sidenote: 1576 A.D.] Martin Frobisher, going forth on this quest, pierced further into the north than any previous explorer had done. He looked again upon the bleak, ice-bound coasts of Labrador and of southern Greenland. [Sidenote: 1583 A.D.] Sir Humphrey Gilbert, acting under the Queen’s authority, visited Newfoundland, and planted there an inconsiderable and unenduring settlement. Another generation passed before England began to concern herself about the shadowy and well-nigh forgotten claim which she had founded upon the discoveries of John Cabot. It was indeed a shadowy claim; but, even with so slender a basis of right, the power and determination of England proved ultimately sufficient to establish and maintain it against the world. The Pope had long ago bestowed upon the Kings of Spain and Portugal the whole of the New World, with all its “cities and fortifications;” but England gave no heed to the enormous pretension which even France refused to acknowledge.[12] Meanwhile, disregarding the dormant claims of England, France had made some progress in establishing herself upon the new continent. She too had in her service a mariner on whose visit to the West a claim was founded. Thirty years after Cabot’s first voyage, John Verazzani--an Italian, like most of the explorers--sailed from North Carolina to Newfoundland; scenting, or believing that he scented, far out at sea the fragrance of southern forests; welcomed by the simple natives of Virginia and Maryland, who had not yet learned to dread the terrible strangers who brought destruction to their race; visiting the Bay of New York, and finding it thronged with the rude and slender canoes of the natives; looking with unpleased eye upon the rugged shores of Massachusetts and Maine, and not turning eastward till he had passed for many miles along the coast of Newfoundland. When Verazzani reported what he had done, France assumed, too hastily as the event proved, that the regions thus explored were rightfully hers.