Just when the expedition reached the home port of Bristol is not known. It was expected back in September; it had not arrived in October. There is no printed record of its arrival. Not having been successful in finding the passage and reaching Cathay, it was regarded as a failure by its princely and mercantile backers. The king, too, was found to have lost his interest in western discovery or colonization. He was most deeply engrossed in domestic affairs. “Great tumults” were happening, “occasioned by the rising of the common people and the war in Scotland.” Moreover, this Henry was now concerned in the pending Spanish alliance and he was loath to run counter to the Pope’s Bull of 1493. The geographical value of the Cabot discoveries was unappreciated, and no more talk was then heard of further western voyaging. Sebastian Cabot himself was not at that time aware that his father and he had discovered a continent. His opinion was that all of the north part of America was divided into islands. VII THE ENGLISH CLAIM TO AMERICA Hakluyt reproduces the several conflicting accounts of the two Cabot voyages extant in his day and marshals them as the “testimonies” confirming the English claim to North America. They are thus summarized in his catalogue of contents of the _Principal Navigations_. “The first taken out of the mappe of Sebastian Cabota cut by Clement Adames; “the second used by Galeacius Butrigarius the Popes legate, and reported by him; “the third out of the preface of Baptista Ramusius [Giovanni Battista Ramusio] before his third volume of Navigations; “the 4. out of the thirde decade of Peter Martyr ab Angleria; “the 5. out of the general history of Lopez de Gomara “and the 6. out of Fabians Chronicle.” The first “testimonie” is from a map which Hakluyt saw in the queen’s privy gallery at Westminster, and of which copies were also to be seen in several country houses of “ancient merchants.” It was attributed to Sebastian Cabot, but whether it was actually his has been a much discussed question by historical writers. Clement Adams was not an engraver but a learned schoolmaster. His “cut” was apparently an inscription from data furnished by Cabot. It was in Latin and is supposed to have been made in the year 1549. This is the extract as Hakluyt gives it: