Print, religion and identity: The cultural significance of Thomas Gage

Abstract

This article revisits the Atlantic significance of Thomas Gage, by placing his experience in the context of the religious turmoil of the seventeenth century and of stories of other converts from Catholicism, showing that his biographers' judgement of him, as uniquely heinous, is unjustified. Five aspects of his life are explored, illustrating the complexities of his experience and the liminality of his identity. His early life as a Catholic, the renouncing of his faith in 1642, his life as an author, a traveller and a propagandist are discussed, concluding that Gage's hybrid identity was an example of the way that isolated figures in the Anglo-Atlantic world negotiated a safe passage through the religious turmoil of the early Stuart and Civil War eras.