Besides the astrolabe our earliest Arctic navigators were supplied with large blank globes on which they puzzled out the navigation problems, an armillary sphere, a great chart with all that was known or conjectured on it, smaller navigation charts, compasses and hourglasses, and the regiment of Medina, translated from the Spanish at the instance of the Arctic navigator Burrough. With such slight and rather unreliable help our brave seamen of the 16th century, in great peril and difficulty, found their way over the trackless ocean, a way now made easy for their descendants. CHAPTER VIII FIRST ENGLISH VOYAGES TO THE NORTH-EAST. WILLOUGHBY. CHANCELLOR. BURROUGH. PET Many reasons led English seamen to turn northward. East and west were occupied by Portugal and by Spain, and our own adventurers, rather later in the field, sought the discovery of routes to Cathay and the Spice Islands by northern ways. Our seamen had long traded with Norway and Iceland. The more northern voyages received hearty encouragement from our Plantagenet kings, who granted charters in 1404, 1432, and 1463 for trade with the Scandinavian nations. Richard III specially favoured the Iceland voyages. William of Worcester, in his chronicle, tells us of the enterprises of William Canynge of Bristol, who sent his ships not only to the Mediterranean and the Baltic, but so far as Iceland, where one of his vessels of 160 tons was lost. Ships also went northward from Lynn and other ports, and before long the commercial ventures led to voyages of discovery. It must always be remembered that the notices of voyages to be met with in the 15th century chronicles, few and far between, represented but a small fraction of English maritime activity and of the voyages actually undertaken. England was preparing silently, but actively and strenuously, for her supremacy of the sea, and for her great work in the Arctic regions. Land was reported beyond the ocean to the westward of Bristol, and as early as July 1480 we are told by William of Worcester that a seaman named Thylde--the most scientific seaman, it is added, in all England--led an expedition in search of the unknown land, and was absent for 64 days. Others followed in his wake. At last the crew of the Bristol ship _Matthew_ did actually discover Newfoundland, or rather re-discover it, for it was the Vinland of the Norsemen. This was in 1496, and in the following years there were other voyages from Bristol to the new land. Nine years afterwards the Company of Merchant Adventurers received their charter, and English Arctic enterprise was not very long in starting under the auspices of that famous Company.