William Weston (explorer)

William Weston was a 15th-century English merchant from Bristol, who was probably the first Englishman to lead an expedition to North America, the voyage taking place most likely in 1499 or 1500. The fact of Weston's leadership has been discovered only in the early 21st century, and it changes interpretations of the discovery era.

He also is believed to have been part of John Cabot's landmark 1497 expedition, the first European expedition to North America since the Vikings 500 years before.

Life and background

William Weston is believed to have been born in Bristol, where he became a fairly minor merchant. He undertook one of the earliest English trading voyages to Madeira, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic.^[1] This took place in 1480 and was likely intended as a way of gaining direct access to the sugar plantations of what was developing as an important Portuguese colony.

In February 1488 Weston was acting as the 'attorney' to the prominent Bristol merchant, John Foster. At this time Weston managed Foster's ship, the Anthony of Bristol, a vessel of about 380 tons burden. The greatest vessel in the Bristol fleet, the Anthony sank at Kingroad (Avonmouth) at the very end of a voyage to Lisbon, with Weston on board. Bristol's merchants blamed the maritime disaster on the negligence of the master. While it is unclear whether Weston was blamed, he subsequently became embroiled in a legal dispute relating to the wreck.^[2]

By 1492 Weston married Agnes Foster, daughter of merchant John Foster.^[3] Her father was known in Bristol as the founder of Foster's Almshouses. Weston and his wife lived at what is now 41 Corn Street.^[4]

It appears that Foster did not approve of his daughter's marriage to Weston, as Foster's 1492 will left nothing to his son-in-law and comparatively little to his daughter.^[5] The will included clauses that ensured that, if Agnes died before William, her inherited property would go to the Almshouse rather than her husband. Additional information about Weston can be found in an unpublished 2007 MA dissertation by Annabel Peacock.^[6]

Voyages of discovery

It is not certain that Weston accompanied Cabot on his expeditions but seems likely as his own expedition was probably related to Cabot's assigning patent rights to him for exploration in 1499. In a December 1497 letter to the Duke of Milan, the Milanese ambassador noted that some of Cabot's Bristol companions on his recent voyages had accompanied the Venetian to Court and had testified to the truth of the explorer's claims about the lands [North America] he had discovered in the summer of 1497. Weston may have been one of his companions.^[7] The ambassador further noted that the leading men in the voyage to be undertaken in the coming year "are from Bristol, and great seamen."^[7]

While the exact year of Weston's independent voyage has yet to be determined, Jones and Condon suggest that it most likely took place in 1499, a year after Cabot's final voyage. Dr Alwyn Ruddock had suggested that Weston's voyage went far up into the North West Atlantic, possibly reaching as far as the Hudson Strait. On her death in December 2005, however, Dr Ruddock left instructions for her research notes to be destroyed.^[8] Since the evidence on which she based this claim has not been located, scholars can not yet determine if she was correct about the extent of Weston's voyage.

Documentation

The main evidence for Weston's expedition is found in a letter from Henry VII to his Lord Chancellor, John Morton, which was discovered in the late 20th century and first published in 2009.^[9] The King's letter provides for a suspension of legal action against Weston because it was the King's intent that Weston would "shortly with goddes grace passe and saille for to serche and fynde if he can the new founde land".^[9]

Historian Evan Jones and his research associate Margaret Condon suggest that William Weston was probably operating under the Letters patent granted to the Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto in Italian), which could be assigned to third parties.^[10] In March 1496 Cabot had been awarded the monopoly right in England to undertake voyages across the Atlantic, in search of new lands or trade routes to China. One of the stipulations of the patent was that Cabot should sail only from Bristol. He reached North America in 1497 and is believed to have landed at Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island before his return. He was the first European to do so since the Vikings had gone to Vinland 500 years before.

That Weston was a deputy or assign of Cabot, seems likely given the King's personal support for the Bristol explorer. That Cabot and Weston were working together is further supported Henry VII's having made a 40-shilling reward to Weston in January 1498. Historians take this to mean that Weston was on Cabot's 1497 voyage. At that time, Cabot was in London sorting out business related to a pension he had been granted by the King and making preparations for a new voyage.^[11] While details of the reward have not yet been formally published, they were reported in the Canadian press in August 2009.^[12] Since that time Jones and Condon also claim to have found that the King later paid Weston a much larger reward, as a way of recompensing him for expenses incurred in his voyage to the New World.^[13]

This document has been published as a result of a research programme dubbed The Cabot Project at the University of Bristol, to find more information about the Bristol discovery voyages of this period.^[13] This project, with participation of several international scholars, has also been working with researchers in Newfoundland on archeological excavations in Carbonear, identified as a potential site for a 15th-century church that may have been started by an Augustine friar accompanying Cabot's 1497 expedition. He is believed to have stayed in Newfoundland to start the mission. .

Sources

• Evan T. Jones and M. M. Condon, 'Weston, William (d. in or before 1505)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, May 2010 accessed 30 Oct 2010
• Evan T. Jones, 'Alwyn Ruddock: John Cabot and the Discovery of America', Historical Research Vol 81, Issue 212 (2008), pp. 224–254
• Evan T. Jones, 'Henry VII and the Bristol expeditions to North America: the Condon documents', Historical Research, 27 Aug 2009
• Evan. T. Jones (ed.), "The Quinn Papers: transcripts of correspondence relating to the Bristol discovery voyages to North America in the fifteenth century", David B. Quinn Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. page 6. (University of Bristol, Bristol Repository of Scholarly Eprints (ROSE), 2009)

References

External links

• The Cabot Project, University of Bristol
• Evan T. Jones and Margaret Condon (eds.), 'Henry VII’s letter to John Morton concerning William Weston’s voyage to the new found land' (University of Bristol, Bristol Repository of Scholarly Eprints (ROSE), 2011), includes annotated transcript, introduction and photograph of document