Bristol Gloucestershire United Kingdom

…Bristol, and …

…Bristol, hoping to raise support for the rebellion and to link up with Miles of Gloucester, who takes the opportunity to renounce his fealty to the King and declare for Matilda.

Stephen responds by promptly moving south, besieging Arundel and trapping Matilda inside the castle.

Stephen then agrees to a truce proposed by his brother, Henry of Blois; the full details of the truce are not known, but the results are that Matilda and her household of knights are released from the siege and escorted to the southwest of England, where they are reunited with Robert of Gloucester.

The reasons for Matilda's release remain unclear.

Stephen may have thought it was in his own best interests to release the Empress and concentrate instead on attacking Robert, seeing Robert, rather than Matilda, as his main opponent at this point in the conflict.

Arundel Castle is also considered almost impregnable, and Stephen may have been worried that he risks tying down his army in the south while Robert roams freely in the west.

Another theory is that Stephen released Matilda out of a sense of chivalry; Stephen has a generous, courteous personality and women are not normally expected to be targeted in Anglo-Norman warfare.

After staying for a period in Robert's stronghold of Bristol, …

The civil war in England between the factions of Stephen of Blois, who had usurped the throne, and his cousin, the Empress Matilda, the daughter and dispossessed heir of King Henry I of England, has raged intermittently since 1135.

Robert, first Earl of Gloucester, who is probably the eldest of Henry’s many illegitimate sons, has fought tirelessly on his sister's behalf.

One of Robert's own sons, Philip, declares for Stephen in 1144, and Robert finds himself and his son on opposite sides.

The Bristol area has been settled since the stone age, and the city had risen to prominence in the Norman era.

Recorded in the Domesday Book as Brycgstow (Old English, "the place at the bridge"), Bristol has been in existence by the beginning of the eleventh century.

It is believed that the Bristol L (the tendency for the local accent to add a letter L to the end of some words) is what had changed the name Brycstow to the current name Bristol.

The city is defended by the stone Norman Bristol Castle built on the site of a wooden predecessor.

The castle plays a key role in the civil wars that had followed the death of Henry I.

Stephen of Blois had reconnoitered Bristol in 1138 but decided that the town was impregnable.

After Stephen was captured in 1141, he had been imprisoned in the castle.

It receives a royal charter in 1155.

Bristol is today England's sixth, and the United Kingdom's ninth most populous city, one of England's core cities and the most populous city in South West England.

Gilbert and his associates had been excommunicated by Pope Clement IV on October 20, 1264, and his lands placed under an interdict.

The Earl is proclaimed to be a rebel in the following month, by which time they had obtained possession of Gloucester and Bristol.

However at this point he changes sides as he falls out with de Montfort and the Earl, in order to prevent de Montfort's escape, destroys ships at the port of Bristol and …

Bristol is the first major English city to be struck by the Black Death.

William le Scrope, a former soldier-adventurer who had served with John of Gaunt in Lithuania, Italy and France; been made seneschal of Aquitaine in 1383, had then joined the household of Richard II, as chamberlain, in 1394 becoming a Knight of the Garter.

Closely involved in Richard's marriage to Isabella of Valois, he had been Isabelle's guardian at Wallingford Castle, of which he was castellan, when the King went to Ireland.

Made Earl of Wiltshire in 1397, he had became Lord High Treasurer in 1398 and has become effective head of the government in Richard's absence.

Having benefitted from the confiscated estates of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick, kept for a time under his hand in the Isle of Man, and of John of Gaunt, he has also accumulated control of a number of strategic castles.

When it becomes clear that the country favors Bolingbroke, Wiltshire, together with a John Bussy and Henry Grene, decides to take shelter in the city of Bristol until such time as Richard returns from Ireland.

Their retainers soon desert them and when Bolingbroke appears before the city walls the local population seizes them and hands over all three.

Henry subjects the three men to a form of trial, pronounces them guilty of treason and sentences them to death.

William le Scrope, together with his two acquaintances, is thus beheaded on July 29, 1399 at Bristol Castle. (An attempt will be made to reclaim the Earldom by a collateral descendant, over five hundred years later. Although he will be proven to be the senior heir male general, the claim will fail on other grounds.)

The Baron Le Despencer, captured at Bristol by a mob, is on January 13, 1400, also summarily beheaded.

Cabot goes to Bristol to arrange preparations for his voyage.

Bristol, the second-largest seaport in England, from 1480 onward has supplied several expeditions to look for Hy-Brazil.

According to Celtic legend, this island lies somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

There is widespread belief among merchants in the port that Bristol men had discovered the island at earlier date but then lost track of it. (Note: Ruddock had contended in a private 1988 letter to a colleague, Quinn, that she had found evidence in Italian archives that Bristol men had discovered North America pre-1470.

As the island was believed to be a source of brazilwood, from which a valuable red dye can be obtained, merchants had economic incentive to find it.

Cabot's first voyage is little recorded.

A winter 1497/98 letter from John Day (a Bristol merchant) to an addressee believed to be Christopher Columbus refers briefly to it, but writes mostly about the second, 1497 voyage.

He notes, "Since your Lordship wants information relating to the first voyage, here is what happened: he went with one ship, his crew confused him, he was short of supplies and ran into bad weather, and he decided to turn back."

Since Cabot received his royal patent in March 1496, it is believed that he made his first voyage that summer.

Information about Cabot’s 1497 voyage comes mostly from four short letters and an entry in a 1565 chronicle of the city of Bristol.

Cabot is described as having one "little ship", of fifty tons burden, called the Matthew of Bristol (according to the 1565 chronicle).

It is said to be laden with sufficient supplies for "seven or eight months".

The ship departs in May with a crew of eighteen to twenty men.

They include an unnamed Burgundian and a Genoese barber, who presumably accompanies the expedition as the ship's surgeon.

It is likely that two ranking Bristol merchants were part of the expedition.

One was probably William Weston, who had not been identified as part of Cabot's expedition before the find of a new document in the late twentieth century.

His participation was confirmed by a document found in the early twenty-first century noting his reward from the King in January 1498 after the ship returned.

More importantly, in 2009 historian Evan Jones confirmed that Weston had undertaken an independent voyage to the New Found Land in 1499, probably under Cabot's patent, as the first Englishman to lead an expedition to North America.