At the coming of the Spaniards to Batangas in 1570, the Malay settlements along the southern shores of Taal Lake at Tagbakin was inhabited by the warlike descendants of the two (2) datus called the Tagalogs. In 1605, after Marshall Gabriel de Rivera received the encomienda of Bombon, the Augustinian Fathers made Tagbakin the first settlement of the Lipeños and a mission center with the name of San Sebastian, perhaps after the installed Patron Saint, which continued to the present. The settlement was made a regular municipality in 1702 and a regular parish in 1716 with Fray Diego de Alday as the first curate.