Cabot
Cabot names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below. 1 of them is described by more than one encyclopedia.
Cabot JOHN (IT. GIOVANNI CABOTO)
Described by 2 of the 6 encyclopedias.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN (IT. GIOVANNI CABOTO), a Venetian pilot, the discoverer of the mainland of North America, settled as a merchant, probably as early as 1472, in Bristol, England, where he is supposed to have died about 1498. Under letters-patent from Henry VII., dated March 5, 1496, he set sail from Bristol in 1497, with two ships, accompanied by Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancto, his sons, and on June 24th sighted Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia. Letters-patent were granted Feb. 3, 1498, for a second expedition, but whether any voyages were made under these is doubtful. However, they form the last authentic record of his career. The same uncertainty exists as to the birthplace of his second son, SEBASTIAN, who, it now appears most probable, was born in Bristol in 1474. Sebastian's name is associated with that of his father in the charter of 1496, and in 1499 he appears to have sailed with two ships in search of a Northwest Passage, and followed the American coast from 60° to 30° N. lat.; but it has been considered doubtful whether this voyage also should not be assigned to his father. We hear no more of Sebastian till 1512, when he appears to have attained some fame in England as a cartographer, in which capacity he entered the service of Ferdinand V. of Spain in the same year. A contemplated voyage of discovery to the Northwest was frustrated by the death of the King in 1516; and the jealousy of the Regent, Cardinal Ximenes, impelled Cabot to return to England in 1517. During this visit he appears to have been offered by Henry VIII., through Wolsey, the command of an expedition which, through either the cowardice or malice of Sir Thomas Perte, who was appointed his lieutenant, "tooke none effect"; but whether the expedition ever left England or not has been disputed. In 1519 Cabot returned to Spain, and was appointed pilot-major of the kingdom by by Charles V., who, in 1526, placed him in command of an expedition which examined the coast of Brazil and La Plata, where he endeavored to plant colonies. The attempt ending in failure, he was imprisoned for a year in 1530, and banished for two years to Oran, in Africa. In 1533 he obtained his former post in Spain, but in 1547 he once more betook himself to England, where he was well received by Edward VI., who made him inspector of the navy, and gave him a pension. To this monarch he seems to have explained the variation of the magnetic needle in several places, which he was among the first, if not the very first, to notice particularly. In 1553 he was the prime mover and director of the expedition of Merchant Adventurers which opened to England an important commerce with Russia. Of his famous embodying the discoveries of his father map (1544), father and himself, one example exists, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. He seems to have died in London in 1557.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
John, an Italian navigator. Little is known of his birthplace or the place of his death. He was in the employ of the English government with headquarters at Bristol where his son Sebastian, also a celebrated navigator, was born. In 1497 John and his son Sebastian sailed west-ward from Bristol in a single vessel. June 24, 1497, they discovered the coast of Newfoundland, or, as others think, of Labrador, and followed it south for a distance of 300 leagues as far as Florida. The English exchequer of the period records a gift $50 "to him that found the new Isle." On the following year they revisited the coast of North America . They were the first to raise a flag on the American mainland. Their voyages are the basis on which English title to territory in the New World rested. Among the odd stories told by the sailors was one to the effect that the codfish on the banks of Newfoundland were so thick that they retarded the ships. Sebastian's part in the voyages of 1497 and 1498 has been disputed. His journeys, it is said, were all taken with his pen within the safe precincts of his father's house at Bristol. See Bristol
Cabot GEORGE, an American statesman
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
GEORGE, an American statesman; born in Salem, Mass., Dec. 3, 1751; educated at Harvard College. In 1791 he became United States Senator for Massachusetts, a post which he held for five years-a steadfast friend throughout of the Washington administration. He yielded essential aid to Hamilton in perfecting his financial system. In 1814 galvanized or coated with a preservative he was chosen a delegate to the memoelected president of that assembly. He died in Boston, April 18, 1823.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's said in 1921 that John Cabot set sail "with two ships" and that Sebastian was "most probably born in Bristol in 1474"; modern scholarship gives him a single small ship, the Matthew, with a crew of about eighteen, and treats Sebastian's Bristol birth and his presence on the 1497 voyage as unlikely — historians now regard much of Sebastian's account of his own achievements as self-promotion, a suspicion Aiton's 1910 entry already reports in the jibe that his journeys were "taken with his pen" at home in Bristol. Cabot is generally taken to have been born in Genoa around 1450 and to have become a Venetian citizen in 1476, and the reward Aiton's renders as "$50" was the £10 entered in Henry VII's accounts "to hym that founde the new Isle." The landfall of 24 June 1497 remains genuinely unsettled between Newfoundland, Cape Breton and Labrador; Canada marked the 500th anniversary at Bonavista, Newfoundland, in 1997, with a replica Matthew sailed from Bristol. Sebastian's 1544 map is still in Paris, and the garbled sentence in the George Cabot entry should read that he was chosen a delegate to the Hartford Convention of 1814 and elected its president.
Written for this edition, 2026.