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:
“It is said that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to establish.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.”
—Robert Green Ingersoll (1833–1899)