It has been supposed that the following is another proof of the participators in the voyage of 1498 having returned: the accounts of Henry VII.'s privy purse for 1498 show that on March 22 and April 1 the King advanced money (sums of £20, £3, and 40s. 5d., in all about £650 in the money of the present day) to Launcelot Thirkill (who seems to have had a ship of his own), Thomas Bradley and John Carter, who were all going to "the new Isle." Probably these men may have fitted out their own ships to accompany Cabot's expedition; but we do not know whether they sailed. This is probably the same Launcelot Thirkill who, according to an old document, was in London on June 6, 1501, when he and three others whose names are given (perhaps his sureties) were "bounden in ij obligations to pay" £20 to the King before next Whitsuntide. Possibly it was this loan received from the King for the voyage, which he then had to repay. If he really started, it may be supposed that his ship was the one that put back to Ireland; and this document is therefore no certain proof of any of the other four ships having ever returned. For that matter they may all have been lost in the same gale. But in the year 1501 the ship that returned from Gaspar Corte-Real's expedition is reported to have brought back to Lisbon a broken gilt sword of Italian workmanship from the east coast of North America; and it is also stated that two Venetian silver rings had been seen on a native boy from that country. It has been assumed that these objects may have belonged to some of the participators in John Cabot's expedition of 1498, which in that case must have reached America, and there met with some disaster.
It is difficult to say more of this voyage. That John Cabot should have returned after having reached America, and after having sailed a greater or less distance along the coast without finding the riches he was in search of, appears to me unlikely. Such an assumption would provide no explanation of the complete silence about him. As the foreign Ministers had followed this expedition with so much attention, we might surely expect them to say something about its having disappointed the great expectations that were formed of it; and in any case it was unlikely that the whole should be buried in complete silence, which, on the other hand, is easily comprehensible if nothing more was heard of the expedition, since it may all have been forgotten for other things which claimed attention. Thus the story of Giovanni Caboto, the discoverer of the North American continent, ends, as it began, in obscurity. He was too early with his discovery. England had not yet developed her trade and navigation sufficiently to be able to follow it up and avail herself of it; this was not to come until about eighty years later.