Historiographer of the Indies, with a considerable pension. By Philip IV. he was made secretary of state; but ere he could enter upon the active duties of his high office, he died at an advanced age in the year 1625. Of his works we have the General History of the Indies in four volumes folio, entitled, Historia General de los Hechos de los Castilanos en las Islas y Terra Fierme del Mar Oceano, with maps and geographical descriptions. The two first volumes. comprehend events between the years 1492 and 1531 ; and the succeeding two carry down the history to the year 1554. Herrera composed various other historical works; but that on the Indies is the most esteemed, and has been translated into almost all the languages of Europe. His means of information were good, and though he relates nothing from actual experience, his narration is considered correct, and is quoted as authority by all writers upon the subject.

X. THOMAS GAGE, the English historian, whose work on the West Indies attracted the serious attention of Cromwell, and eventually led to the conquest of Jamaica, was lineally descended from Robert Gage, the third son of Sir John Gage, of Firle in Sussex, the governor of the Tower in the reign of Queen Mary, and who died in 1557. He was the son of John Gage of Hailing-house in Surry, and the brother of Colonel Gage the Royalist, "governor of Oxford, and Masse-founder of that famous

University," who was killed in the battle at Culhambridge. His other brother, Colonel George Gage, was also a man of great celebrity in his time: he it was who so gallantly relieved Basing-house when it was besieged, on the 14th of September, 1644; and he had been employed as early as 1621, to negotiate the dispensation when the marriage was pending between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain. "The coming of Mr. Gage has given me infinite contentment." writes Padre Maestre at Rome, to the Spanish ambassador in England; “no man could have come hither that could better advance the business than he, as well in respect of his good affection, as for his wisdom and dexterity in all things."

This historian, instead, therefore, of having been

a runagate priest," as he has been called, was a man who, by the repute of his connexions, and the accuracy of his observations, might be supposed to have considerable weight and interest in the councils of the Protector. He was educated in the Roman faith, in foreign universities, and entered into monastic orders; but refusing to subscribe to the rule of the Jesuits, at the positive desire of his father, he was disinherited by him, and expelled the family. His father left his property between a daughter and two sons, whom he had by a second marriage, and died before the subject of this memoir returned from

*Cabala-Mysteries of State, by a Noble Hand, p. 238.

his wanderings in America, whither he went, as he expresses it," to abide till such time as death should surprise his angry father, Ignatius Loiola, his devoted Mecenas, and till he might there gain, out of Potosi, or Sacatecas, treasure that might counterpoise that child's part, which, for detesting the fourcornered cap and black coat of the Jesuits, his father had deprived him of." It appears that Thomas Gage had long entertained some scruples of conscience with respect to his religion; and, certainly, the conduct of its professors in the new world did not tend to overcome the difficulty, or dispel the doubt. He sailed from Cadiz, attached to a mission of the Dominicans, destined to the Philippine islands, in the year 1625; and the course of the mission necessarily taking him to Mexico, for the purpose of embarking on the South Sea, he there heard such a disgusting account of the depraved and wretched condition of the missionaries in those islands, that he determined upon abandoning his undertaking: being refused permission to do so, by his commissary, Friar Calvo, he deserted the company, and travelled through Chiapa, and Guatemala, dissembling his religious doubts, and amassing, by the usual means of papal extortion, a large sum of money. With this, the fruits of his religious impositions on the Indians, he determined on returning to England "to satisfy his conscience;" and after various unlucky adventures, he reached his native land in 1638. He then went to Rome, to satisfy his doubts on some

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points of doctrine; and there, distracted by the sophisms and subtilties of the Roman church, he trusted the establishment of his wavering faith to an experiment, which is too characteristic of those times to be passed over in silence :

"I bethought myself further," says he, "that I would try one way, which was to see if I could find out a miracle which might give mee the better satisfaction of the Romish religion than had the former experience of my life, and the lives of the priests, cardinals, and all such with whom I had lived in Spain and America. I had heard much of a picture of our Lady of Loretto, and read in a book of miracles, or lies, concerning the same, that whosoever prayed before that Picture, in the state of mortall sinne, the Picture would discover the sinne of the soule, by blushing, and by sweating. Now, I framed this argument to myself, that it was a great sinne, the sinne of unbeliefe; or to waver and stagger in points of faith but in mee, according to the tenents of Rome, was the sinne; for I would not believe the point of Transubstantiation, and many others; therefore, if the miracles which were printed of the aforesaid Lady of Loretto were true, and not lies, certainly shee would blush and sweat when such an unbeliever as I prayed before her. To make this triall, I went purposely to Loretto; and kneeling down before God, not with any faith in the Picture, I prayed earnestly to the true Searcher of hearts, that, in his Son Jesus Christ, he would mercifully

look upon me, a wretched sinner; and inspire, and enlighten, mee with his Spirit of truth, for the good and salvation of my soule. In my prayers I had a fixed and settled eye upon the Lady's picture, but could not perceive that she did either sweat or blush: wherewith I arose up from my knees most comforted, and encouraged in my resolution to renounce and abandon Popery; and saying within myself, as I went out of the church, Surely if my Lady neither sweat nor blush, all is well with me, and I am in a good way for salvation; and the miracles written of her are all lies. With this I resolved to follow the truth in some Protestant church in France, and to relinquish error and superstition*.”

Trusting, however, to the protection of the Parliament, he returned to England in the autumn of 1640, and was ordered by the Bishop of London to preach his recantation sermon in St. Paul's; in which he alluded to a circumstance that, he says, struck him with such force, that he desired publicly to record it as a main argument in support of his rational conversion. This circumstance is detailed at length in the 197th page of his work, and was no other than, that one day, as he said mass at Porto Bello, a mouse stole away "the wafer-god of the Papists," committing the larceny while he was praying with his eyes shut. This convinced him "that bread really and truly was eaten upon that altar; and by no means Christ's glorious body, which can*Survey, p. 210.