In 1499, Englishman Discovers America

Well, we don't know if he actually got that far but there was a letter from King Henry VII suggesting that merchant William Weston was on an expedition to the New World. "Writing on 12 March 1499, King Henry VII instructs his Lord Chancellor to suspend an injunction against the merchant because he will shortly 'with God's grace, pass and sail for to search and find if he can the new found land'."

This extraordinary find may be the first attempt of any explorer to discover the Northwest Passage. But the odd thing about it all was that this letter was discovered in 1981 by archivist Margaret Condon. She in turn gave it to historian Prof David Beers Quinn. According to a BBC news article, Quinn passed it along to another historian Dr. Alwyn Ruddock who was doing research on John Cabot, Venetian explorer, the first European "discoverer" of America. He wanted to wait until Ruddock published first but that never happened. And then, "the letter might have been lost forever had it not been for a bizarre request by Dr Ruddock in her will to destroy all of her research notes." 

Bristol University's Dr Evan Jones said it was "an exciting find" that gave us a glimpse at a previously unknown, but epic achievement." But the whole "destroy my notes" request got Jones' attention.

So what does this all mean? Well, the moral of this story is, don't sit on your notes. Publish them. Or you can read the scant details here and sort out the letter here, letter there controversy for yourself.

Comments

[Dr Evan Jones]

If you want to read more, the University of Bristol press release has links to the two academic articles, which are now freely available online - courtesy of Wiley-Blackwell:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2009/6515.html

[Susan Higginbotham]

That's fascinating!