CHAP, ii.] WEST INDIES. 157 



/ 

 We may surely conclude, that applications of such a 



nature could not have been made to the supreme ex- 

 ecutive magistrate, without any pretence of injury re- 

 ceived. To suppose that a body of the subjects of any 

 civilized state, or that even any individual of sound 

 mind, would intrude into the national councils, and 

 presume to solicit a violation of the public faith, and 

 the commencement of hostilities towards a powerful 

 state and an ally, without any provocation, is to sup- 

 pose a case which I believe never did occur in histo- 

 ry, and which indeed it seems next to impossible 

 should happen. Among other persons who present- 

 ed memorials on this occasion, we find the names of 

 colonel Modyford and Thomas Gage. The former 

 was one of the earliest and most enterprising planters 

 of Barbadoes; and Gage had resided twelve years in 

 New Spain in priest's orders. He was brother of Sir 

 Henry Gage, one of the generals under Charles I.|j 

 and appears to have been a man of capacity and ex- 

 tensive observation. 



In his memorial, which is preserved among the 

 state papers of Thurloe, he enters fully into a justifi- 

 cation of the measures which he recommends. 

 " None in conscience (he observes) may better at- 

 tempt such an expulsion of the Spaniards from those 

 parts, than the English, who have been often expelled 

 by them from our plantations; as from St. Christo- 

 pher's, St. Martin's, from Providence, and from Tor- 



|| This Sir Henry Gage was killed at the battle of Culham bridge, in 

 1644. He was ancestor of the late General Gage, by whom I was fa- 

 voured with this account of Thomas Gage. 



