Hy-Brazil.

Looking at John Cabot for another thread I came across an Irish myth of the Island of Hy-Brazil, and how expeditions were sent from Bristol to find it in 1480 and 1481. When Cabot returned in 1497 it was said that he landed in Brasil than men from Bristol had discovered in the past. So WI one of these expeditions from Bristol had actually found something in 1480/1? WI the idea that men from Bristol had found Nth America 17 years before Cabot was true?

Considering Columbus initial voyage lead to the Papal Bull splitting the world in half in 1494 and Cabot's voyage in 1497 what would a Bristol discovery mean? Would Columbus sail a decade earlier? Would a Papal Bull be announced before the Portuguese even reached the Cape of Good Hope?
 
We are edging out of AH and into history. There are considerable indications that Bristol-based ventures had been fishing off Newfoundland for some time when Colombus landed, OTL.

Kirsten Seavers, "The Frozen Echo" sets the start of Uk fishing off the Grand Banks in 1430, generations before Colombus.
 
Yes, but we're talking about voyages specifically to discover land across the Atlantic rather than fishermen doing their thing every day. Similarly plenty of Europeans had travelled and traded in Asia long before De Gama, but they did their thing anomously and thus had no lasting effect.
 
There was a royal expedition into North America in the 1360s from Scandinavia, looking for pagan Norse.

The thing is, the papal bull was a response by a spanish pope to conflicts between Spain and Portugal over the newly discovered supposedly gold-rich territories. Landing on the american mainland does not autmatically give maps of the whole of the americas.

As far as anyone knew at the time, North America was Iceland mark 2. Slightly warmer, but with hostile natives.
 
The Papal Bull was announced in 1494, long before anyone knew about the Aztecs, Incas and gold, it was put out there on an assumption.

What I'm thinking is that Cabot did his thing after Columbus had made two voyages and the word got out. So if the Bristol boys got the word out in 1481 maybe Columbus would be in a similar situation to OTL Cabot, and would sail west in about 1485. This could mean an earlier Papal Bull which included England getting everything north of some notional line of latitude.
 
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