Hakluyt gives the text of both of these documents. Cabot’s book comprised thirty-three items, as a whole well illustrating his ripe judgment and good seamanship. Particularly wise were his instructions as to the attitude of the voyagers toward new peoples whom they might discover. “Every nation and region is to be considered advisedly.” The natives were not to be provoked by “any disdaine, laughing, contempt, or such like,” but were to be used with “prudent circumspection, with all gentlenes and courtesie.” “For as much,” he shrewdly observed, “as our people and shippes may appear unto them strange and wondrous, and their’s also to ours: it is to be considered how they may be used, learning much of their natures and dispositions by some one such person [native] as you may first either allure or take to be brought aboord of your ships, and there to learn as you may, without violence or force.” The native so taken to be “well entertained, used and apparelled; to be set on the land to the intent that he or she may allure other to draw nigh to shew the commodities.” But the succeeding instruction was vicious, though in accord with the brutality of the age: “and if the person taken may be made drunke with your beere or wine you shall know the secrets of his heart.” The king’s letter-missive defined the voyage to be purely a commercial affair. It was an expedition by sea “into farre Countreis to the intent that betweene our people and them a way may be opened to bring in and cary out merchandises.” It was to seek in the countries that might be found heretofore unknown “as well such things as we lacke, as also to cary unto them from our regions such things as they lacke.” So “not onely commoditie may ensue both to them and to us, but also an indissoluble and perpetuall league of friendship be established betweene us both.” Free passage was asked for the voyagers through their dominions, with the assurance that nothing of theirs should be touched by the visitors unwillingly to them; and the same hospitality that they would expect their subjects to receive should they at any time pass by the regions of the English king. The fleet started from Ratcliffe at the time appointed for the departure, the tenth of May (according to Willoughby’s journal, other accounts say the twentieth) and dropped down the Thames by easy stages. On the “Esperanza” with Sir Hugh were the larger number of merchants. The minister was on the “Edward Bonaventure”; and among the seamen of the latter was William Borough, the younger brother of the ship’s master, a lusty youth of sixteen, who afterward became comptroller of the queen’s navy. The spectacle of the passage by Greenwich, where the court was then seated at the ancient royal palace, is vividly portrayed by the historian of Chancellor’s exploits on this voyage, Clement Adams, the schoolmaster: