In This Letter,
Preserved By Hakluyt, Several Very Good Remarks Will Be Found Respecting
The Navigation To India, As Practised In Those Days; Yet No Mention Is
Made In The Letter, As To The Profession Of Stevens, Or On What Occasion
He Went To India.
By the letters of Newberry and Fitch[397], which will
be found in their proper place, written from Goa
In 1584, it appears
that he was a priest or Jesuit, belonging to the college of St Paul at
that place; whence it may be concluded that the design of his voyage was
to propagate the Romish religion in India. In a marginal note to one of
these letters, Hakluyt intimates that _Padre_ Thomas Stevens was born in
Wiltshire, and was sometime of New College Oxford. He was very
serviceable to Newberry and Fitch, who acknowledge that they owed the
recovery of their liberty and goods, if not their lives, to him and
another _Padre_. This is also mentioned by Pyrard de la Val, who was
prisoner at Goa in 1608, at which time Stevens was rector of Morgan
College in the island of Salcet[398]." - _Astley._
[Footnote 397: In Hakluyts Collection, new edition, II. 376. et seq.]
[Footnote 398: Purchas his Pilgrims, II. 1670.]
* * * * *
After most humble commendations to you and my mother, and craving your
daily blessing, these are to certify you of my being alive, according to
your will and my duty. I wrote you that I had taken my journey from
Italy to Portugal, which letter I think came to your hands, in which
hope I have the less need to tell you the cause of my departing, which
in one word I may express, by naming _obedience_. I came to Lisbon
towards the end of March, eight days before the departure of the ships,
so late that, if they had not been detained about some important
affairs, they had been gone before our arrival; insomuch that others
were appointed to go in our stead, that the kings intention and ours
might not be frustrated.
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