Anglo-American Relations Before 1580 57
adding a headnote of his own which further confused the
issue: “Of three savage men which hee [i.e., Sebastian]
brought home and presented unto the king in the xvii yeere
of his raigne”—the right date, but the wrong explorer. “This
yeere also were brought unto the king three men, taken in
the new founde Hand, that before I spake of in William
Purchas time, being Maior. These were clothed in beastes
skinnes, and ate rawe fleshe, and spake such speech that no
man coulde understand them, and in their demeanour Uke
to bruite beastes, whom the king kept a time after. Of the
which upon two yeeres past after I saw two apparelled after
the manner of Englishmen, in Westminster pallace, which
at that time I coulde not discerne from Englishmen, till I
was learned what they were. But as for speech, I heard none
of them utter one worde.”4
The first extended mention of primitive Americans in
what may be called imaginative literature was in the New
Interlude of the Nature of the Four Elements, by John Ras-
tell, brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More. Rastell attempted
in 1517 a voyage, not alone of discovery but of colonization,
to the New World, to which Henry VIII granted a safe-
conduct in Letters Patent; but the King’s support was luke-
warm, for his Lord Admiral, the Earl of Surrey, successfully
interfered with the voyage in order to prevent ships leaving
the Channel that he thought were needed for its defense.
The records of the subsequent action brought by Rastell
in the Court of Requests for recovery of damages throw
some light on the purposes of his venture. He took goods
that appear to have been intended for trade with civilized
Cathay: “cofers of silks and tukes and other mercery ware”;
but he also took supplies that could mean that a lengthy stay
was intended somewhere else: “howsold stuff/as fedyr bedes