LONDON, (Reuters) – A university lecturer has uncovered a letter written by Henry VII which he believes suggests the first English-led expedition to reach America arrived three years earlier than thought.
The letter caught the attention of Dr Evan Jones, a history lecturer at the University of Bristol, the city where Hugh Eliot was a farmer when he undertook his 1502 voyage to America — usually regarded as the first led by an Englishman.
Jones believes one William Weston, a merchant and mariner from Bristol, holds that honour and that he landed in 1499, just seven years after Christopher Columbus.
Henry’s letter called for the Lord Chancellor to withhold an injunction against Weston, who had failed to pay his rent and was facing repossession of his house, because “he will shortly with God’s grace, pass and sail for to search and find if he can the new found land.” Jones said: “It seems Weston sailed north, perhaps to get round this great rock that was in the way of his passage to China.”
That rock was North America.
Jones tracked down the letter at the National Archives. He had been spurred on his quest for details about Weston after the death in 2005 of researcher Alwyn Ruddock, who for 40 years studied early English voyages but whose will ordered all her notes to be burned.
Her findings were never published but she was known to have been aware of Weston’s voyage and to have believed he was the first to America, although she had not seen Henry’s letter. “It’s now become pretty clear that Weston did sail,” said Jones. “Finding this letter only corroborates her claim about him.”
