Reputation
From the later sixteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century it was generally supposed that it was Sebastian, rather than his father John, who led the famous Bristol expeditions of the later 1490s, which resulted in the discovery, or rediscovery, of North America. This error seems to have been of Sebastian's own making, being based on what he told people in his old age. The result was that the influential geographical writer Richard Hakluyt represented John as a mere figurehead for the expeditions and suggested that Sebastian actually led them. When new archival finds in the nineteenth century demonstrated that this was not the case, Sebastian became something of a 'hate' figure - disparaged by Henry Harrisse, in particular, as a man who willfully appropriated his father's achievements and represented them as his own. Because of this, Sebastian received much less attention in the twentieth century - even though other finds demonstrate that he did, for instance, lead some genuine exploratory voyages from Bristol in the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Read more about this topic: Sebastian Cabot (explorer)
Famous quotes containing the word reputation:
“How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made!”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“The esteem of good men is the reward of our worth, but the reputation of the world in general is the gift of our fate.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The reputation of generosity is to be purchased pretty cheap; it does not depend so much upon a man’s general expense, as it does upon his giving handsomely where it is proper to give at all. A man, for instance, who should give a servant four shillings, would pass for covetous, while he who gave him a crown, would be reckoned generous; so that the difference of those two opposite characters, turns upon one shilling.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)