write to his correspondent in London, not
only to pay a bill, but to go find her out, and carry her in money a
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 a hundred pounds,
each, 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.
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; only
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 to England with all my wealth.

In order to prepare tilings for my going home, I first, the Brazil fleet
being just going away, resolved to give answers suitable 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 thanks for their just
dealings, and the offer of the eight hundred and seventy-two moidores
which were undisposed of, which I desired might be given, five hundred
to the monastery, and three hundred and seventy-two to the poor, as the
prior should direct; desiring the good padre's prayers for me, and the
like. I wrote next a letter of thanks to my two trustees, with all the
acknowledgment that so much justic