840 HE WOULD NOT BE A PAPIST.

of my poor widow whose husband had been my first benefactor,
and she while it was in her power my faithful steward and
instructor. So the first thing I did, I got a merchant in Lisbon
to write to his correspondent in London, not only to pay a bill,
but to go find her out, and carry her in money an hundred pounds
from me, and to talk with her, and comfort her in her poverty by
telling her she should, if I lived, have a further supply. At the
same time I sent my two sisters in the country each of them an
hundred pounds, they being, though not in want, yet not in very
good circumstances; one having been married and left a widow,
and the other having a husband not so kind to her as he should be.
But among all my relations or acquaintances I could not yet pitch
upon one to whom I durst commit the gross of my stock, that I
might go away to the Brazils and leave things safe behind me;
and this greatly perplexed me.

I had once a mind to have gone to the Brazils, and have settled
myself there, for I was, as it were, naturalized to the place; but I
had some little scruple in my mind about religion, which insensibly
drew me back, of which I shall say more presently. However, it
was not religion that kept me from going there for the present : |
and as I had made no scruple of being openly of the religion of
the country all the while I was among them, so neither did I yet;
ouly that now and then having of late thought more of it (than
formerly) when I began to think of living and dying among them,
I began to regret my having professed myself a Papist, and thought
it might not be the best religion to die with.

But, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me
from going to the Brazils; but that really I did not know with
whom to leave my effects behind me. So I resolved at last to go
to England with it; where, if I arrived, I concluded I should
make some acquaintance, or find some relations that would be
faithful to me. And accordingly I prepared to go for England with
all my wealth.

In order to prepare things for my going home, I first, the
Brazil fleet being just going away, resolved to give answers suit-
able to the just and faithful account of things I had from thence.
And, first, to the prior of St. Augustine I wrote a letter full of