Sponsorship
Like other Italian explorers, including Christopher Columbus, Cabot was commissioned by another country, and in Cabot's case it was England. Cabot had a simple plan, to start from a northerly latitude where the longitudes are much closer together, and where, as a result, the voyage would be much shorter.
Historians have generally assumed that, on arrival in England, Cabot went straight to Bristol to seek backers. This seemed logical, given that his expeditions did, indeed, set out from this port and it was the only English city to have had a prior history of undertaking exploration expeditions out into the Atlantic. Moreover, since Cabot's royal patent (issued in 1496) stated that all expeditions should be undertaken from Bristol, it seemed that his primary supporters were likely to have come from that city. Yet, while Bristol may have seemed like the logical place for Cabot to go to seek funding, Dr Alwyn Ruddock claimed to have found evidence that Cabot actually went first to London and received backing from the Italian community there. In particular, she suggested he found a patron in the form of Fr. Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, an Augustinian friar who was also the deputy to the papal tax collector Adriano Castellesi. Ruddock suggested that it was Carbonariis, who certainly accompanied Cabot's 1498 expedition and who was on good terms with the King, who introduced the explorer to Henry VII. Beyond this, Ruddock claimed that Cabot received a loan from an Italian banking house in London. Determining the basis of Ruddock's claims is difficult, since she ordered the destruction of all her research notes on her death in 2005. However, since that time, researchers on what has now become The Cabot Project, have been engaged in a hunt to relocate her evidence. On the matter of Cabot's sponsorship, Dr Francesco Guidi Bruscoli (University of Florence), has found the ledger which contains the payment made to Cabot in March 1496. Fifty nobles (£16 13s. 4d.) was provided by the Bardi banking firm of London, so that Cabot could 'go and find the new land'. The payment from these Florentine merchants would have represented a substantial contribution, albeit it could not have completely financed even a single expedition.
On 5 March 1496 King Henry VII of England gave Cabot letters patent with the following charge:
...free authority, faculty and power to sail to all parts, regions and coasts of the eastern, western and northern sea, under our banners, flags and ensigns, with five ships or vessels of whatsoever burden and quality they may be, and with so many and with such mariners and men as they may wish to take with them in the said ships, at their own proper costs and charges, to find, discover and investigate whatsoever islands, countries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels, in whatsoever part of the world placed, which before this time were unknown to all Christians.
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