220 



Cljonms c^teto^, ''"primus in |ui)i$/' 



By Herbert Chitty. 



^OME perhaps unnecessary obscurity seems to surround the 

 birthplace of Thomas Stevens (or Stephens), the Jesuit 

 missionary who was at Goa from 1579 until his death in 1619, and 

 who is reputed to be the first Englishman who travelled to India 

 by the Cape of Good Hope. Within a montli after his arrival at 

 Goa he sent home an excellent account of his voyage in a long 

 letter to his father, Thomas Stevens, dated 10th November, 1579, 

 and twenty years later this letter was printed in Hakluyt's 

 " English Voyages " (11., ii., 99). From its first sentence we learn 

 that the writer's mother was alive when he last had news of her : 

 otherwise the letter discloses nothing of family affairs. 



It is generally agreed that Stevens was a native of Wiltshire ; 

 and there is no reason to question the statement to that effect of 

 John Newberye, who was befriended by Stevens at Goa in 1583 

 (see Hackluyt, II., i., 249) ; but in none of the accounts of Stevens 

 which I have met with does his actual birthplace in Wiltshire 

 seem to be satisfactorily identified. 



In the " Voyage of Pyrard de Laval " (Hakluyt Soc), II., i., 269, 



there is a note about Stevens, from which the following is an 



extract : — 



"The Jesuit authorities say that he was from Buston, in the diocese of 

 Salisbury, a place which may be identified as Boscombe, a village a few 

 miles N.E. of Salisbui-y." 



On the other hand, in the memoir of Stevens in the Dictionary 

 of national Biography (Suppl. III., 355), we read that he 



"Is described (Foley, Records, S.J., vii., 1453) as a native of ' Bulstan,' 

 ill the diocese of Salisbury ; he may therefore be identified with the Thomas 

 Stevens, native of Bourton, Dorset, who was elected scholar of Winchester 

 in 1564, his age being given as thirteen (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 139). 

 According to Hakluyt he was for a time at New College, Oxford, but his 

 name is not to be found in the registers. . . . He was admitted to the 

 Society of Jesus on 20 Oct., 1575, his age being given as twenty-six." 



