Primus in Afros? The Career of John Gregory S. J.

Among the English pioneers in Southern Africa must be honoured the name of John Gregory of Lyme Regis, writes W.F. Rea, who embarked for Mozambique from the Jesuit College at Goa during the reign of Charles II.

W.F. Rea | Published in History Today Volume 16 Issue 3 March 1966

For many years it used to be said that the Jesuit, Thomas Stephens, the author of the Purana, the classic epic poem in the Marathi language on the Creation and the Redemption, was the first Englishman in India. In 1955, however, the tenacious industry and vast erudition of Fr. Georg Schurhammer, the well-known authority on sixteenth-century Indian history in general and on Francis Xavier in particular, was the means of publicising to English readers the fact that while Fr. Stephens had incomparably greater claims to distinction, his particular title of being the English pioneer in India could no longer be upheld.¹

There were, in fact, two hitherto unknown English soldiers whose names had been transmuted into the Portuguese forms of Langarote Barbudo and Estevam Lopez, who were blown up, but not killed, during the famous siege of Diu in 1546. This was over forty years before Fr. Stephens got to India. So, in Fr. Schurhammer’s words, “Let them share the honour, unsought by Thomas Stephens, the first English Jesuit in India.”