 Historian Evan Jones and his fellow researcher, Margaret Condon, suggest that William Weston was probably operating under the Letters patent granted to the Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto in Italian), which could be assigned to third parties.In March 1496 Cabot had been awarded the monopoly right in England to undertake voyages across the Atlantic, in search of new lands or trade routes to China.One of the stipulations of the patent was that Cabot should sail only from Bristol.