Chapter 3 - Bristol 1497

    Bristol has had a long and colourful history. Around the year 100 A.D. Roman soldiers built a village there. During the reign of King Ethelred II (the unready) 968-1016, Bristol was called Briegstowe, the place of the bridge. It was incorporated as a town in 1155. Its location at the confluence of the Avon and Frome rivers and the fact that the Avon is a navigable river which flows into the estuary of the Severn and its large protected harbour built in 1247, placed it in an enviable position to become a great sea port. At the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, there was trading between Bristol and Ireland and the town was visited by Scandinavian traders and seamen. The Bristol merchants and seamen traders soon began going to Bergen in Norway to buy fish. They also at that time began sailing further north to fish off the coast of Iceland. By the 1300’s, English wool was an important and valued export, as was the coarse cloth produced in England and sent to Europe for finishing before marketing. This continued expansion of trade secured Bristol’s position as an important seaport in England.

    The Calais Customs Roll of 1346 lists among other items, the number of ships and mariners from ports in England. At that time Bristol had between 600 and 700 mariners, surpassed only by few ports, Yarmouth, Fowey and Dartmouth. We can deduce from the Roll that Bristol occupied a position of prominence as a shipping port during the middle of the 14th century. Bristol was made a county by King Edward III in 1373. It was here that John Cabot came in c1495 to begin preparations for his great voyage of discovery which was to change the world forever. North America in particular was able to shed the old class systems and develop in the United States a new system of government which was to spill over into Europe.

    The Customs returns of England for the 50 year period 1485-1535 shows that trade from the smaller ports such as Bristol remained virtually stationary while the shipping business of London more than doubled. The increase in the size of ships in that period left the shallow harbours useless for all but the coastal trade and fishing boats. Harbours such as London with their deep harbours, large populations and money to improve docking facilities prospered.

    When John Cabot arrived at Bristol in 1495 he found a bustling community. Stories of the Western Ocean had been making the rounds since the 1480s. The Bristol seamen and merchants claimed it was they who first visited the new found land and it was they who first showed Cabot the way.

    There is no doubt that when John Cabot came to Bristol he was in contact with the merchants there, the great entrepreneurs of their time: Robert Thorne, William Thorne, Thomas Thorne, Hugh Elyot, Richard Warde, Thomas Asshehurst, John Thomas, John Lloyd (Thloyde), the most experienced sea captain in England, John and Francis Fernandez, John Gonzales and the others who were all dynamic businessmen and saw in the land to the west a chance to make their fortune. Some may have prospered, not from gold and silver or the spice trade as they had hoped but from the great fishery which was to develop in the new found land. Some may have perished in the great adventure, for it is almost certain that some of the above mentioned people accompanied Cabot on the voyages of 1497 and 1498. To think otherwise would fly in the face of reasonable reality. Some of these men would have invested in the ventures and would have taken passage with Cabot.

    The names listed are a few found on records of that era. To people today they are simply names on paper as little is known about their personal lives or the lives of their contemporaries. In written history only people of social status and position are extensively recorded, leaving the ordinary people to oral history of their families. At present, written family trees and collected documents with some written history have filled the void for many of today’s population. The development of the computer with its different facets of communication will make it easier for people in general to maintain their family history and examine the past, thus making the history of all groups more accessible.

    So this was Bristol of 1497, alive with rumours of voyages to the west and land found there. The news of the discovery of land by Christopher Colombus, in the present day West Indies, was the catalyst needed to provide the impetus to the merchants of Bristol to proceed with a voyage west of Ireland in search of new land. John Cabot’s arrival in 1495 was the break the merchants were looking for to launch their enterprise. He entered into negotiations with the merchants and soon they had an agreement. They then began talking to Henry VII to secure Letters Patent to conduct the voyage. In 1496 the Letters Patent was issued to John Cabot, his sons Lewis, Sebastian and Sancio giving them license to discover new lands to the west.

    The voyage was to change Bristol and the West Country into the nucleus of the fish trade in the northwest Atlantic and sow the seed of the British Empire.