Thomas Gage's The English-American

Thomas Gage

The book, The English-American, is the personal account of the journey of Thomas Gage in Spanish America. The primary source available for my analysis is Gage’s original work edited by J. Eric S. Thompson, who provides an insightful introduction that supplements a more complete understanding of Gage’s character. The persona of Thomas Gage is relatively easy to understand and contemplate upon because of the tone of his work’s narrative, and how it vividly recreates his emotions of the time. Gage is obviously not a professional novelist; however he is extremely observant, making him a good travel writer. In addition, it seems that Gage is quite accurate in his descriptions and one can assume that he is relatively honest. Gage’s book was first published in 1648 and presented to Cromwell and company to persuade the English to invade the Spanish Americas. This presents an interesting conundrum: When did Gage decide to publish his work as an outline for an English invasion, and was he a spy for the entirety of
In the introduction, Thompson explains that the young men who entered the seminaries in Europe were particularly dedicated, “and were for the most part drawn from the aristocracy.” (Thompson xlv) Thus, “the slackening of religious fervor and the mundane attitudes observable in a by no means negligible proportion of the friars and priests in Mexico and Guatemala came as a shock, and in the end was probably, as he notes, one of the factors in his desertion of his old faith.” (Thompson xlvi) Taking into account the emotions of confusion that Gage obviously experienced even during his first moments in Spanish America, it appears that Gage’s questioning and problems with the Catholic doctrine are inevitable, and each event similar to this one compounds his feelings of religious