A gold coin dating to 1422-27 has been found in Newfoundland. Now what?

As the Canadian Press reported today (link here to the article in the Globe & Mail), a gold coin minted in London between 1422 and 1427 has been found in an undisclosed location on the south coast of Newfoundland. While experts caution that the coin wasn’t necessarily in Newfoundland at that date, it inevitably will fuel speculation as to whether the late historian Alwyn Ruddock was right in her contention that Bristol voyagers reached Newfoundland in the 1470s, before John Cabot’s first successful voyage from Bristol in 1497. I address the Ruddock contentions in my book The Race to the New World, as well as in an article I wrote for Canada’s History that is archived on this website.