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In 1481 he was made warden of the east marches, but the next year he joined the league against James III. and his favourite Robert Cochrane at Lauder, where he earned his nickname by offering to bell the cat, i.e. to deal with the latter, beginning the attack upon him by pulling his gold chain off his neck and causing him with others of the king's favourites to be hanged.

No sooner had the presence of the Turks at Otranto, in the extreme southeast of Italy, been rendered a thing of the past by the surrender of the Moslem garrison to the Duke of Calabria in September, 1481, than the peninsula was again ranged in opposing camps by the attempt of the Venetians, assisted by Sixtus and his nephew, to dispossess Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, of his dominions.

Including the voyages of Cada Mosto and Pedro de Cintra, which have been already detailed, as possibly within the period which elapsed between the death of Don Henry in 1463, and King Alphonzo, which latter event took place on the 28th August 1481, and the detached fragments of discovery related in the present Section, we have been only able to trace a faint outline of the uncertain progress of Portuguese discovery during that period of eighteen years, extending, as already mentioned, to Cape St Catherine and the island of Annobon.

With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, that between 1481 and 1808 it had punished three hundred and forty thousand persons, and of these nearly thirty-two thousand had been burnt!

Robins, in his "History of Paddington," mentions an inquisition taken in 1481, in which "The Groves, formerly only three fields, had extended themselves out of Kensington into Brompton, Chelsea, Tybourn, and Westbourne." The manor passed later to William Essex. It was bought from him in 1570 by the Marquis of Winchester, Lord High Treasurer of England.

His solid and practical qualities were by this time beginning to be recognised even by Philippa's haughty family, and it was possibly through the interest of her uncle, Pedro Noronhas, a distinguished minister of the King of Portugal, that he got the command of a caravel in the expedition which set out for Guinea in December 1481.

In the year 1480, the valiant King Don Alphonzo died, and was succeeded by his son Don John II. who, in 1481, gave orders to Diego d'Azambuxa to construct the castle of St George del Mina, on the African coast.

"In the first year of the operation of the Inquisition, 1481, two thousand victims were burnt in Andalusia; besides these, many thousands were dug up from their graves and burnt; seventeen thousand were fined or imprisoned for life. Whoever of the persecuted race could flee, escaped for his life.

In 1481 appeared an Italian translation of the Bucolics of Vergil from the pen of Bernardo Pulci.

He built the first blast furnace in Sweden, and died in 1702, leaving the property to his son, who died in 1720. The heirs sold out in 1722 to a man named Grill, in whose family the property remained until 1800, when it was purchased by the ancestors of the present owners. The famous Dannemora mines, which produce the best Bessemer ore in the world, have been worked continuously since 1481.