That one of the Cabots discovered the northern continent of America, at the period named, is well authenticated, and in Biddle’s memoirs of him many other authorities are quoted in confirmation of this fact.[57] But if any doubt still remains, the second patent, granted on the 3rd of July, 1498, by Henry VII., the original of which was found by Mr. Biddle in the Rolls Chapel, sets this question finally at rest. That document indeed only named the father, “John,” but the previous patent was in the names of “John Cabot and his sons,” and it does not follow that the discovery of the “Lande and Isles” is intended to be attributed to the personal action of the elder Cabot. However, though the continent of America was first discovered by an expedition commissioned to “set up the banner” of England, this in no way detracts from the honour justly due to Christopher Columbus, who had five years previously made known, for the first time, the existence of a world in the West. Although his great discoveries were confined to the West Indian Islands and to a portion of the South American continent, they revealed the important fact that rich lands, hitherto unknown, lay in a certain quarter of the globe, and could be reached with no extraordinary difficulty or danger by intrepid and skilful mariners. Again, as Columbus did not sight the continent of America until August 1498, in the course of his third voyage, he could hardly then have been ignorant of the discoveries made by Cabot on the 24th of June, 1497, which created nearly as much noise in Europe as his own had done a few years before, and were considered of such vast importance that Henry VII., whose court was then filled with the agents of various foreign powers, fitted out the second expedition under the decree of 3rd July, 1498, which had for its object commercial intercourse with a continent the existence of which was unknown to Columbus, except, perhaps, by common report, until six months afterwards. The discovery of a new world of vast extent is, however, too high an honour to be conferred on any one man. While the great Genoese navigator fully deserves the credit of having explored the mysteries of the Atlantic Ocean, and of having shown the existence of rich continental lands to the west, Sebastian Cabot is entitled to the honour of having been the first to discover that portion of those lands now constituting the United States of America; and to Great Britain more than to any other country is due the fame of the thorough exploration and first colonisation of a world destined to surpass in wealth and power the greatest of modern nations. [Sidenote: Sebastian Cabot, and his opinions.]