receive fifty thousand maravedis as a “gratificacion.”[107] Cabot returned from South America to Seville with two ships at the end of July or the beginning of August, 1530, and laid his final report before the Emperor, of which an abstract may be found in Herrera. Private complaints were laid against him, and at the suit of the families of some of his companions who had perished in the expedition he was arrested and imprisoned, but liberated on bail. Public charges were preferred against him for misconduct in the affairs of the La Plata, and the Council of the Indies by an order dated from Medina del Campo, Feb. 1, 1532, condemned him to a banishment of two years to Oran, in Africa. But the sentence was not carried into execution. Under the date of 1531, Herrera speaks of his wife and children.[108] During Cabot’s absence, that is to say, on April 4, 1528, Alonzo de Chaves was appointed “Piloto Mayor,” with Ribero;[109] but the office was resumed by him not long after his return. Navarrete quotes from the Archivo de Indias a declaration made in 1574, by Juan Fernandez de Ladrillos, of Moguer, a great pilot, over seventy years old, who had sailed to America for twenty-eight years, that he was examined by Sebastian Cabot in 1535.[110] This office Cabot retained till he left Spain and returned to England. I may as well introduce here as elsewhere a few passages from that part of the history of Oviedo recently published at Madrid, for the first time, by the Academy of History. Oviedo is very severe on Cabot for his want of knowledge and skill in his operations on the La Plata. But my citations are for another purpose. “Another great pilot (piloto mayor), Sebastian Cabot, Venetian by origin, educated in England, who at present is Piloto Mayor and Cosmographer of their Royal Majesties, etc.... I will not defend from passions ... and negligence Sebastian Cabot in the affairs of this expedition, since he is a good person and skilful in his office of cosmography, and making a map of the whole world in plane or in a spherical form; but it is not the same thing to command and govern people as to point a quadrant or an astrolabe.”[111] Several interesting episodes in the life of Cabot during his residence in Spain have been recently made public from the Venetian archives. They may be related here.