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Henry VII
The Seed Time; Part 2
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The Seed Time; Part 2
2. Henry VII's reign saw the Genoese navigator Columbus discover the New World for Spain (1492), and Vasco da Gama round the Cape of Good Hope and open the route to the East for Portugal (1497). Nor was England content merely to look on. In 1497 some Bristol merchants fitted out an English ship, which under Venetian leaders - John and Sebastian Cabot - first reached the mainland of America. The value of these discoveries was slow to reveal itself. None the less, the change when it came was enormous. Commerce began to pass from the "thalassic" to the "oceanic" stage; that is to say, that while hitherto it had gone along the landlocked seas, especially the Mediterranean, it now began to put out on to the Atlantic. The change of trade routes meant much to England. While the Mediterranean had been the highway, England had been far off. The new highway lay at her door. Henceforth the states with an oceanic seaboard rose, those with a thalassic seaboard declined. England, France, Spain, and the Low Countries throve; Venice, Genoa, and the Mediterranean ports dwindled. Henry VII's reign saw only the sowing of the seed; yet when the harvest came long years after, it was a great one for England.
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Chronology
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