[This sketch-map is taken from the fac-simile in Stevens’s _Historical and Geographical Notes_, and needs the following key:— 1. Groenlandia. 2. Islandia. 3. Frislandia. 4. Meta incognita ab Anglis inventa An. 1576. 5. Demonum ins. 6. S. Brandon. 7. Baccalaos ab Anglis, 1496. 8. Hochelaga. 9. Nova Albion inventa An. 1580, ab Anglis. 10. Nova Francia. 11. Virginia, 1584. 12. Bermuda. 13. Azores. 14. Florida. 15. Nueva Mexico. 16. Nova Hispania. 17. Caribana. 18. Brasilia. 19. Fretum Magellani. 20. Peru. This map is so rare that the copies in some of the choicest collections lack it, such as the Huth (p. 920,) Brinley (no. 42), and Carter-Brown (no. 370). Rich priced a copy in 1832 with the map at £4 4s., which would to-day be a small sum for the book without the map; while a copy with the map is now worth £20. Quaritch, Cat. 331, no. 1. The Boston Athenæum copy has the map. See Norton’s _Lit. Gazette_, new series, i. 272. _Bull. Soc. Géog._, Oct. 1858, p. 271.—ED.]] He also produced here from the Rolls Office a memorandum of a license granted by the King to John Cabot alone, to take five English ships of two hundred tons or under, with necessary furniture, and mariners and subjects of the King as would willingly go with him,—dated the 3d day of February in the thirteenth year of his reign (1497/8). The full copy of this license Hakluyt probably never saw, and the significance of this brief memorandum was never known until, two hundred and forty years afterwards, the entire document was found and published by Mr. Richard Biddle in his _Memoir of Sebastian Cabot_.[81] It was therefore often interpreted, in connection with the letters patent previously issued, as a grant to take up ships for the first voyage, which, as was supposed, did not take place till 1498. The original grant of this license, of which Hakluyt publishes a brief memorandum, is found to be a permit to enlist ships and mariners, etc., “and them convey and lead _to the land and isles of late found by the said John in our name and by our commandment_. Paying for them and every of them as and if we should in or for our own cause pay, and none otherwise.” The part I have italicized is most significant, and shows that a previous voyage had been made by John Cabot under the authority of the Crown.