Note 383 — Extracts from “The Admirable Adventures and Strange Fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his Second Voyage to the South Sea, 1591,” published in Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part IV, lib. vi, c. 7. London, 1625.

It was not unusual to make a charge for the administration of the sacraments. In 1653, the parochial priests complained that the Capuchin friars administered the sacraments without claiming an “acknowledgment;” and the authorities at Rome (1653) prohibited their doing so within five leagues of the capital (Paiva Manso, p. 233). At Mbamba, the priest had a regular scale of prices. A baptism cost 7,000 cowries, for a marriage a slave was expected, and so forth; and thus, adds the Bishop of Angola (1722): “little children go to limbo, and grown-up people to hell!”