ldest son,
Prince Arthur, to Catharine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain,
by which he secured a very large marriage portion for the Prince, and,
what was of equal importance, the alliance of Spain against France.

Arthur died soon afterward, and the King got a dispensation from the
Pope, granting him permission to marry his younger son Henry to
Arthur's widow. It was this Prince who eventually became King of
England, with the title of Henry VIII, and we shall hereafter see that
this marriage was destined by its results to change the whole course
of the country's history.

334. The World as known at Henry's Accession (1485).

The King also took some small part in certain other events, which
seemed to him, at the time, of less consequence than these matrimonial
alliances. But history has regarded them in a different light from
that in which the cunning and cautious monarch considered them.

A glance at the map (opposite) will sho how different our world is
from that with which the English were acquainted when Henry was
crowned. Then the earth was generally supposed to be a flat body
surrounded by the ocean. The only countries of which anything was
certainly known, with the exception of Europe, were parts of western
Asia, together with a narrow strip of the northern, eastern, and
western coasts of Africa. The knowledge which had once existed of
India, China, and Japan appears to have died out in great measure with
the travelers and merchants of earlier times who had brought it. The
land farthest west of which anything was then known was Iceland.

335. First Voyages of Exploration; the Cabots, 1497.

About the time of Henry's accession a new spirit of exploration sprang
up. The Portuguese had coasted along the western shores of Africa as
far as the Gulf of Guinea, and had established trading posts there.
Later, they reached and doubled the Cape of Good Hope (1487).
Stimulated by what they had done, Columbus, who believed the earth to
be round, determined to sail westward in the hope of reaching the
Indies. In 1492 he made his first voyage, and discovered a number of
the West India Islands.

Five years afterward John Cabot, a Venetian residing in Bristol,
England, with his son Sebastian, persuaded the King to aid them in a
similar undertaking. They sailed from that port. On a map drawn by
the father after his return we read the following lines: "In the year
of our Lord 1497, John Cabot and his son Se