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. He reached North America in 1497 and is believed to have landed at Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island before his return. He was the first European to do so since the Vikings had gone to Vinland 500 years before. That Weston was a deputy or assign of Cabot, seems likely given the King's personal support for the Bristol explorer. That Cabot and Weston were working together is further supported Henry VII's having made a 40-shilling reward to Weston in January 1498. Historians take this to mean that Weston was on Cabot's 1497 voyage. At the time of the reward, Cabot was in London sorting out business related to a pension he had been granted by the King and making preparations for a new voyage. Details of the reward were first reported in the Canadian press in August 2009. Following the expedition the King paid Weston a £30 reward, as a way of recompensing him for expenses incurred in his voyage to the New World. The reward was paid in 1500, based on examining a 500-year-old scroll which is a long made from the skins of more than 200 sheep, by using an ultraviolet light. The translation of the transaction of the reward, written by the auditor of the account, presumably following consultation with the King, reads: This document has been published as a result of a research programme dubbed The Cabot Project at the University of Bristol, to find more information about the Bristol discovery voyages of this period. This project, with participation of several international scholars, has also been working with researchers in Newfoundland on archeological excavations in Carbonear, identified as a potential site for a 15th-century church that may have been started by an Augustine friar, Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis, accompanying Cabot's 1498 expedition. He is believed to have stayed in Newfoundland to start the mission.