Storia do Mogor 332.1.9

332.1.9

Since the women they lived with were poor and subsisted by infamous prostitution of their bodies, they sometimes visited Englishmen in the town [of Madras] and submitted themselves to them. They confided to these men all that passed between them and the fathers of San Thome. This is the reason that the English refused to look at the Portuguese fathers, and in their talk spoke of their evil lives. I have often heard Father Ephraim say that his hardest task was to defend the priests of San Thome against the tongues of the English, and reply to the scandalous accusations made against and stories told about them. These stories were founded on the statements of the public women. It was also the case that they (the priests) went themselves to Madras to collect alms, and there drank with the English to such excess that they always came away drunk; in fact, so drunk that, unable to walk, it was requisite to carry them home. This happened to that same priest-administrator of the diocese and three other of his priests, greatly to the scandal of the public.