the Newfoundland coast, where, as none of them knew how to fish, and although Hore told them they would go to unquenchable fire, they began to eat one another. "On the fieldes and deserts here and there, the fellowe killed his mate, while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them."[11] Luckily for the remainder, a French ship was blown into the harbour, and they seized her with all the food she had on board, sailing home in safety, leaving the French sailors to a horrible fate, which they seemed to have escaped; for "certaine moneths after, those Frenchmen came into England and made complaint to King Henry the 8: the king ... was so mooved with pitie, that he punished not his subjects, but of his owne purse made full and royale recompense unto the French."[12] The two voyages here set forth are the only ones that are actually recorded, but there is reason for supposing that English ships were quite familiar with the coast of what was afterwards called Maine. Between 1501 and 1510 there are many scattered intimations of English voyages; and one patent in particular, in the first year of the sixteenth century, shows that men of some importance were granted leave to sail and discover in the West. In 1503 a man brought hawks from Newfoundland to Henry VII.; and in the next year a priest is paid £2 to go to the same island. In or about the eighth year of Henry VIII., Sebastian Cabot was again in the employ of the English and in command of an expedition to Brazil, which only failed owing to "the cowardise and want of stomack" of his partner, Sir Thomas Pert.[13] It is evident from the first Act of Parliament relating to America, passed in 1541, that the Newfoundland fishery was carried on by Devonshire fishermen almost continuously from the discovery of the island; and the Act of 1548, prohibiting the exaction of dues, shows "that the trade out of England to Newfoundland was common."[14] Anthony Parkhurst corroborates this fact in a letter to Richard Hakluyt in 1578, in which he says, "The Englishmen, who commonly are lords of the harbors where they fish, and do use all strangers helpe in fishing if need require, according to an old custome of the countrey."[15] It may, therefore, be inferred that the growth of the Newfoundland fisheries, together with the increasing knowledge of the country and its products, helped to suggest to the Englishmen of the period the possibilities of future colonisation.