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Contents

   



(Top)
 


1 Catholic Beginnings  





2 In the Spanish Americas  





3 The New Religion  





4 Informer  





5 The Travel Writer  





6 The Military Adventurer  





7 Sources  














Thomas Gage (priest)






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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bessarion (talk | contribs)at01:40, 31 December 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
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Thomas Gage (clergyman), (c. 1597-1656).

He was the son of the English Catholic gentleman John Gage, from 1622 a baronet, and his wife Margaret. The family were strong Catholics and were intermarried with other catholic families, including that of Sir Thomas More, the former Lord Chancellor. There were no less than five priests in the family: Thomas, and his brothers George and William , a Jesuit, while their half-brothers John and Francis were born of their father's second marriage.

Catholic Beginnings

This was a closed world and the family's Catholicism was practiced behind closed doors. His three older brothers followed in the Catholic tradition: one was the Royalist soldier Colonel Sir Henry Gage (1597-1645), who fought on the Continent for Catholic Spain and eventually in England for King Charles I; George was a diplomat and priest; and William was a Jesuit. Like many young Catholic men of England, Thomas was sent by the family to study in a Spanish school staffed by Dominicans.

John Gage wanted his son Thomas to become a Jesuit, but this desire was resisted, posibly because the boy had already imbibed anti-Jesuit sentiment through his early connections with the Dominicans and wanted to become a Dominican friar himself. Gage himself claims that this led to his being disowned by his father.

Having been sent to the English CollegeatValladolid, in Spain, he showed his first sign of a difficult character when he developed a loathing for the Jesuits who ran the College, left and entered the Dominican, being ordained a priest in. As a Spanish Dominican he served as professor of rhetoric in the convent of Jerez, and then volunteered in 1625 for the mission to the Philippines. There was a hitch. Before his departure a royal decree forbade any foreigner, under severe penalties, to go to the Spanish colonies. Gage was hidden in a barrel and the party of thirty or so Dominican friars sailed from Cadiz, on July 2 1627.

In the Spanish Americas

The route led through Mexico, where Gage decided to remain and for a time taught Latin in the convent school. By Gage's own account, in Mexico City he heard from a friar who had run away from his duties in the Philippines that the Dominican superiors there were cruel and harsh and the friars corrupt and worldly. In order to escape onward posting to the Philippines, Gage and three other friars escaped Mexico for Guatemala. Here he was accepted by the Dominicans as a useful addition to their manpower. He spent two or three years in the priory in Guatemala City, where he seems to have liked the opportunity for study but began to have religious doubts and was led to ask to return to England. The Dominican authorities refused, on the grounds that missionaries had to remain in the Americas for ten years.

Further embittered, he decided to accompany friar Francisco Moran into new territories of Guatemala to learn the language and ways of the Amerinds. This he did and preached to two communities of Mixco and Pinola for five years. It seems likely that this was already in his mind at least in part a largely mercenary operation, aimed at gathering funds to finance a return to England. Gage gathered a handsome 9,000 crowns, in what proportion honestly gained is left unclear. By 1635, with this sum accumulated, Gage, now increasingly disenchanted with Spanish America, was ready to return to Europe, requested permission from the Dominican Provincial, was refused and was posted instead to Petapa. After a year there he decided to run for it. All in all he had spent the years 1625-1637 in Mexico and Guatemala.

Turning his wealth into pearls and precious stones, on January 7 1637, he made his way through Nicaragua and sailed from Costa Rica on February 4 losing most of his money to Dutch corsairs en route. He finally reached Spain on November 28 1637, and in 1638 arrived in England. There, after an absence of twenty-six years, he could not get along with his fellow Dominicans and soon traveled to Rome, though his doubts about his faith continued. On the way he called on his brother Colonel Henry Gage at his winter quarter's near Ghent.

The New Religion

While popular psychology can be a dangerous trap when applied to historical figures, Gage seems to conform to a kind of type which is not unknown in the pages of history: the austere fanatic who ends up completely kicking over the traces. In the Americas he surely met with instances of how the Christianity preached by the missionaries often quickly became an ingredient in a curious syncretistical mix. Without doubt he encountered cases of the the sort of laxity which the Dominican and other orders were trying to remedy in other parts of the world. Clerical scandals are not new, either. At the same time Gage dedicates his energies to telling the world tales such as that of the friars playing cards, with one friar who jokingly scoops the winnings into the sleeve of his habit, saying that Dominicans are forbidden to touch money. An incident like that may have been marked by bad taste, and it may have been symptomatic of a less than devout atmosphere, but it might also not merit a change of religion. Another story recounted with disdain by a Gage who against his vows amassed a fortune, is of the Spanish friar noted for his learning who was excommunicated when money was found in his quarters. Gage seems to be by temperament a bitter pill and later in life seems distinctly unhinged.

Despairing now perhaps more or less of everything, he returned to England, began to take an active part in the parliamentary troubles in England, and then in 1642 abandoned the Catholic Church for a very Protestant form of Anglicanism. He became a "Preacher of the Word" and married. Though he was rewarded with the rectorship of Deal, he won for himself general ridicule by a sermon he preached that summer in St Paul's, London, entitled "The Tyranny of Satan, discovered by the teares of a converted sinner [...] by Thomas Gage, formerly a Romish Priest, for the space of 38 yeares, and now truly reconciled to the Church of England". In 1651 came his 'A duell betvveen a Iesuite and a Dominican : begun at Paris, gallantly fought at Madrid, and victoriously ended at London, upon fryday the 16 day of May, Anno Dom. 1651 / by Thomas Gage, alias the English American, now preacher of the word at Deal in Kent, in several printings, and then his A full survey of Sion and Babylon, and a clear vindication of the parish-churches and parochial-ministers of England [...], or, A Scripture disproof, and syllogistical conviction of M. Charles Nichols, of Kent : delivered in three Sabbath-dayes sermons in the parish church of Deal in Kent, after a publick dispute in the same church with the said Mr. Charles Nichols, upon the 20. day of October 1653.

Informer

Not only was Gage not a silent convert, he was also prepared to go to great lengths to persecute his former faith. In December 1642 he testified at the trial of the Jesuit Thomas Holland that they had been together at St Omer. The result was a sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. The following year, 1643 it was the turn of the Franciscan Francis Bell, with the same result. On September 7 1644 the Jesuit Ralph Corby was executed on his evidence. In 1649 he is said to have been summoned by the Council of State, presumably to provide information about Catholic priests. In fact there is a record of a Thomas Gage being arrested in 1617, and brought before the Privy Council. It cannot be excluded that this was our Thomas Gage and that the Council released him in return for his becoming a spy, though this is not proved. He also testified against his late brother Sir Henry Gage's chaplain and friend, the Jesuit Peter Wright, at the Old Bailey in London in 1651 and obtained his death, having tried but failed to encompass that of his former fellow Dominican Thomas Dade. Thomas Gage had blood on his hands.

The Travel Writer

When the Civil War brought success for the Revolution, he had aligned himself become closely with Oliver Cromwell. In 1648 he had published The English-American, or a New Survey of the West Indies, a mixture of some original with plagiarized material, taken in later editions especially from the compilation by the parson Samuel Purchas and from the Hispania Victrix (1552) Francisco Lopez de Gómara (1511-1562). Though full of gross exaggerations and some flagrant romancing , the book made a sensation and for the first time made public a description of the Spanish possessions in America. It was to be reprinted in expanded editions, in extracts and in translations thereafter. In this book, addressed to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the Parliamentary Captain-General, Gage promotes the view that the Spanish dominions with their long coastlines and weak defences would be an easy prey for English forces and urges such an attack as a sort of religious duty and mission upon the English. If God raised the Puritans to purify England, how much more needing of remedy were the Catholic dominated regions of the Americas, subjugated by what Gage considers their notoriously corrupt clergy. The thesis was that it would be possible to attack and loot Spanish possessions in the Americas, without embarking upon a costly war in Europe. The book made special mention whatever might assist an invading army -- roads, fortifications, populations, layouts of towns.

The Military Adventurer

On the strength of Gage's undoubted experience in the Caribbean and Central America, this appeal was heeded, especially with the ending of the Anglo-Dutch war in 1654 led Cromwell to be attentive to new foreign policy openings. In a secretly planned operation, on a force of 18 warships, 20 transport vessels and 3,000 men set sail from Portsmouth on Christmas Day 1654 with Gage on board as chaplain and guide and arrived at Barbados a month later. In practice the soldiers were in part the most troublesome members of their regiments, in part newly pressed Londoners. An additional 6,000 troops, untrained and badly disciplined, were raised from servants and freemen in the colonies of Barbados, Montserrat, Nevis and St Kitts.

Supplies ran low, the commanders squabbled and morale plunged when the soldiers learned they were not to plunder the Spanish colonies. The aim was to secure a base of operations in the Caribbean and from there to threaten Spanish trade and treasure routes in central America and weaken Catholic influence in the Americas. Arriving off Santo Domingo on April 13, 1655, the expedition found that it had been reported beforehand and the Spaniards were ready. In shore the English forces suffered greatly from heat and drought during their march through difficult tropical terrain. Moreover, contrary to Gage's confident prediction, the Indians fought with the Spanish had taken measures of defense. Coupled with the democratic habits of the Roundheads, the result was fiasco.

Moving on, the fleet anchored on May 11 off Jamaica, landed the troops of General Venables, and, after a desperate resistance by the Spaniards, captured the island. Though Spain formally ceded Jamaica to England in 1670, the slaves ("Maroons") released by the Spanish harassed the English efficiently into the 18th century. The expeditions commanders were later to be charged with deserting their posts, briefly imprisoned in the Tower, and relieved of their commands. As to Thomas Gage, before the immediate operation was concluded he died (probably of dysentery), in 1656.

Sources

Norman Newton, Thomas Gage in Spanish America, Faber & Faber, London, 1969.

J. Eric S. Thompson (ed.), Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1958.

For an article by Hether Sebens http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=451


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Gage_(priest)&oldid=33324217"





This page was last edited on 31 December 2005, at 01:40 (UTC).

This version of the page has been revised. Besides normal editing, the reason for revision may have been that this version contains factual inaccuracies, vandalism, or material not compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.



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