http://www.vancouversun.com/life/shillings+paid+role+discovery+Canada/1937781/story.html
40 shillings paid for role in discovery of Canada
Researchers find William Weston was paid for services on ship that Cabot sailed to the future dominion
By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service August 28, 2009
After unveiling the identity of an English mariner who led a forgotten expedition to North America in 1499 -- just two years after John Cabot's history-making voyage to Newfoundland in 1497 -- British researchers have found fresh evidence showing what William Weston was paid for his role in the discovery of Canada: 40 shillings.
The latest revelation bolsters the case that Weston -- a previously unknown merchant from the English port city of Bristol -- was aboard the Matthew when it sailed for North America 512 years ago and deserves at least an honourable mention in the opening pages of Canadian history, alongside Cabot himself.
Calling the new find "another piece of the jigsaw" now being assembled by historians, University of Bristol professor Evan Jones told Canwest News Service that the entry in King Henry VII's royal accounts ledger on Jan. 12, 1498 "confirms that Weston and Cabot were closely linked from the start" in England's 15th-century effort to discover and claim new lands across the Atlantic Ocean. And it probably means that, for the first time, historians will be able to name someone other than the Italian-born Cabot as having reached Canada on June 24, 1497 -- the first recorded European landfall in North America since the time of the Vikings.
While it's been known for centuries that Cabot sailed with a crew of about 18 men -- including English sailors, at least two Bristol merchants and a few of the captain's Italian companions -- no other participant in the history-making expedition has ever been identified by name.
"I think we can assume that the payment was either in recognition of the support Weston was providing to Cabot generally," says Jones, "or because he had accompanied Cabot on the 1497 voyage."
The notable lines in the royal ledger, with payments recorded in Roman numerals, are:
"Item to a Venysian in Rewarde -- lxvi s viii d" (66 shillings, 8 pence).
"Item to William Weston of Bristoll -- xl s" (40 shillings).
Jones said the payment to Weston would have been equivalent to about 20 weeks' wages for an average labourer in 1498.
"Not a vast sum of money, but not entirely paltry either," he said, adding that "the real prizes" for leading expeditions to the New World would be "the establishment of a monopoly-controlled route to China, or the exploitation of things like mineral resources in the lands discovered."
The discovery of the king's payment to Weston was made last month by Margaret Condon, the British archivist who had earlier found a letter from the king that revealed a previously unknown, Weston-led voyage to Canada in 1499 -- the year after Cabot disappeared on his second expedition to Newfoundland.
Jones -- who this week has published an article about Henry VII's letter in the journal Historical Research, and is co-ordinating a new scholarly probe into the Cabot-era voyages of discovery -- said the record of a royal payment to Weston offers further proof of his deep involvement in England's overseas expeditions. Significantly, the Weston entry in the king's household book immediately follows another notation -- one that is already well known to Canadian and British historians -- recording payment of 66 shillings, 8 pence to "a Venysian in Rewarde."
Experts have concluded that this entry refers to the Anglo-Italian navigator Cabot, the only citizen of Venice -- or "Venetian" -- in a position at that time to receive such a payment from the English king. "Nobody noted the significance of the payment to Weston that follows it, because nobody knew that Weston was involved in the Bristol voyages," says Jones. "Now, though, we know that he led an expedition in 1499. I think we can assume that this earlier payment was also a reward for engaging in exploration from Bristol."
In a statement issued Thursday by the University of Bristol, which hailed the research findings for shedding light on a key moment in North American history, Jones suggested more discoveries may be on the way. "We knew that our knowledge of the first English expeditions to the New World was very incomplete," he states. "But this is beginning to show just how incomplete it is. Up till now, no one has ever even heard of William Weston."
The Weston story took about 30 years to come to light after Condon's discovery of the Henry VII letter, which described Weston's planned voyage in 1499 to "serche and fynde" the "new founde land" first reached by the Cabot-led expedition of 1497. The find was examined by two top British historians, David Quinn and Alwyn Ruddock, but neither published the revelation before their deaths.
Jones was alerted to Weston's role in the discovery voyages after examining some papers that survived a bizarre order in Ruddock's will -- carried out after her death in 2005 -- that her research notes should be destroyed.
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A link to a picture of the letter:
http://www.vancouversun.com/Centuries+letter+reveals+forgotten+expedition+Canada/1933083/story.html
women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain
~ ee cummings