_Collisions of the Dutch and English in the Eastern Seas—The
English retire from Japan—The Spaniards repelled—Progress of the
Persecution—Japanese Ports, except Hirado and Nagasaki, closed to
Foreigners—Charges in Europe against the Jesuits—Fathers Sotelo and
Collado—Torment of the Fosse—Apostasies—The Portuguese confined to
Deshima—Rebellion of Shimabara—The Portuguese excluded—Ambassadors put
to Death—A. D. 1621-1640._
Already the relation of the Dutch and English in the East had assumed
the character of open hostility. A letter from Cocks, of March 10,
1620,[105] complains that the Hollanders, having seven ships, great and
small, in the harbor of Hirado, had, with sound of trumpet, proclaimed
open war against the English, both by sea and land, to take their
ships and goods, and kill their persons as mortal enemies; that they
had seized his boat, fired at his barks, and had beset the door of his
factory,—a hundred Dutchmen to one Englishman,—and would have entered
and cut all their throats but for the interference of the Japanese: all
because Cocks had refused to give up six Englishmen who had escaped
from two English ships[106] which the Dutch had captured, and whom
they claimed to have back, representing them to the Japanese as their
“slaves.”
To sustain the English interest in the eastern seas, the English East
India Company, by great efforts, had fitted out, in 1617, the largest
expedition yet sent from England to the East Indies. It consisted of
the “Royal James,” of one thousand tons; the “Royal Anne,” of nine
hundred; the “Gift,” of eight hundred; the “Bull,” of four hundred; and
the “Bee,” of one hundred and fifty tons; and sailed from London under
the command of Martin Pring, who, twelve years before, following up the
discoveries of Gosnold, had entered and explored—the first Englishman
to do so—Penobscot bay and river, on the coast of what had since begun
to be known as New England. Pring sailed first for Surat, where the
Company had a factory, and where he assisted the native prince against
the Portuguese, with whom he was at war. On the 17th of June, 1618, he
arrived at Bantam, whence he proceeded, in September, to Jacatra, a
city of the natives, the site of the present Batavia. There he received
news that the Dutch in the Moluccas, not content with driving out the
Spaniards, had attacked the English also, making prisoners of the
merchants, whom they had treated with great harshness. News had also
reached England of these Dutch outrages, and to make head against them,
the Company, not long after Pring’s departure, despatched Sir Thomas
Dale—also well known to readers of American history as high-marshal of
the colony of Virginia, one of its first legislators, and for three or
four years its deputy governor—with a fleet of six large ships, with
five of which he joined Pring in November, 1618, in the Bay of Bantam,
assuming the command of the whole, including others which he found
there.
Both fleets were in a very leaky condition, and after some skirmishing
with the Dutch, and the capture of a richly laden Dutch ship from
Japan, the English sailed for the coast of Coromandel, to refit and
to obtain provision, which could not be had on the coast of Java.
Having arrived at Musilapatam, Dale died there August 9, 1619. Toward
the end of the year, Pring, who succeeded in the command, returned
again towards the Straits of Sunda, and on the 25th of January, 1620,
met, off the coast of Sumatra, three English ships of a new fleet,
from which he learned that four others of the squadron to which they
belonged had been surprised while at anchor off the coast of Java, and
taken by the Dutch; that another had been wrecked in the Straits of
Sunda; and that the Dutch were in pursuit of two others, with every
prospect of taking them.
As the Dutch at Jacatra were three times as strong as the three
squadrons now united under Pring, and as three of his largest ships
were very leaky, and the whole fleet short of provisions, it was
resolved to send part of the vessels to a place at the north end of
Sumatra, in hopes to meet with the Company’s ships on their way with
rice from Surat, while Pring himself, with his leaky vessels, should
proceed to Japan,—reported to be a good place for repairs as well as
for obtaining provisions. Just at this time the happy news arrived,
brought by two vessels despatched for that purpose from Europe, of an
arrangement of the pending dispute, and of the union of the Dutch and
English East India Companies into one body.
Shortly after this welcome information, Pring sailed for Japan with
two of his leaky vessels, having made an arrangement to be followed in
a month by a united fleet of five English and five Dutch ships. These
ships were intended partly, indeed, for trade, but their principal
object appears to have been attacks upon Manila and Macao.
All these vessels, the “Unicorn” excepted, arrived safely at Hirado.
She was stranded on the coast of China, and her crew were the first
Englishmen known to have landed there. A joint embassy was sent to
the emperor with presents, which, notwithstanding the privileges of
trade, were expected from every vessel that came. Having completed his
repairs, and leaving the other vessels behind him, Pring sailed on the
7th of December, 1620, in the “Royal James,” for Jacatra, carrying with
him the news of the death of Adams, who, having remained in the service
of the Company, had never again visited England.[107]
The arrangement with the Dutch was but of short duration. Fresh
quarrels broke out. In 1623 occurred the famous massacre of Amboyna,
followed by the expulsion of the English from the Spice Islands; and
about the same time the Company abandoned the trade to Japan, after
having lost forty thousand pounds in the adventure.[108] This massacre
of Amboyna consisted in the execution, by the Dutch, of ten or twelve
factors of the English East India Company, on the charge of having
conspired with some thirty Japanese residents to seize the Dutch fort.
One of these Japanese having put some questions to a Dutch sentinel
about the strength of the fort, he and others of his countrymen were
arrested on suspicion, and by torture were compelled to accuse the
English, who were then tortured in their turn into accusing each other.
The residence of these Japanese at Amboyna is a proof, in addition to
those already mentioned, of the adventurous spirit of the Japanese of
that day, who had indeed a reputation for desperate daring, such as
might give some color to the suspicions of the Dutch.[109]
Meanwhile the persecution continued as violently as ever. In the year
1622 fourteen Jesuits were burnt at the stake, including Spinola, a
missionary of illustrious birth, who had been twenty years in Japan.
Two friars were also burnt, who had been found on board a Japanese
vessel from the Philippines, captured in 1620, by one of the English
ships, the Elizabeth, employed in the blockade of Macao, and by her
commander carried to Hirado. The master and crew of the Japanese vessel
and many other native converts were executed at the same time. The
Spaniards were suspected of smuggling in missionaries, and were wholly
forbidden the islands. As a greater security against this danger, by an
edict, issued in 1624,[110]—shortly previous to which there had been
a very severe inquisition in Yedo and its neighborhood for concealed
priests,—all the ports of Japan were closed against foreigners, except
Hirado and Nagasaki, of which Hirado remained open to the Dutch and
English, Nagasaki to the Portuguese, and both to the Chinese. At the
same time was introduced the custom of requiring an exact muster roll,
and making a strict inspection of the crews of all foreign vessels.
By the same edict all the subjects of the Catholic king, whether
Portuguese or Spaniards, were banished the country, however long they
might have been settled there, and even though they might have families
by Japanese wives.
What aggravated the misfortunes of the Japanese church, and greatly
diminished the dignity of its fall, was the still hot jealousy and
mutual hatred of the Jesuits and of the friars, inflamed rather than
quenched by all this common danger and suffering. The bishop of Japan
having died (it was said of grief, at the peril of his flock) just
as the persecution broke out, a most unseemly quarrel arose, which
was carried on for several years with great virulence, as to the
administration of the bishopric. It was claimed, on the one hand, by
Father Corvailho, the provincial of the Jesuits, under an authority
from the Pope; and, on the other, by Father Pierre Baptiste, a
Franciscan, as vicar-general of the archbishop of Manila, to whose
jurisdiction it was pretended the bishopric of Japan appertained. This
quarrel about the administration of the bishopric was finally settled
by the Pope in favor of the Jesuits.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF AN ANTI-CHRISTIAN EDICT]
The Jesuit seminaries in Japan being broken up, they had organized one
at Macao for the education of Japanese ecclesiastics; but the severe
penalties denounced against all priests coming into Japan, and against
all, whether natives or foreigners, who should shelter them after
their arrival, made the existence of the church and the celebration of
divine service every day more precarious. From year to year it grew
more and more difficult for new missionaries to get landed, great as
was the zeal for that service. Of those who did land, the greater part
were immediately seized and put to death. Large rewards were offered to
any person who would betray or take a missionary. Those already in the
country lived in hourly danger of arrest, forced to conceal themselves
in cellars, holes and caverns and the huts of lepers, exposing to
tortures and death all who might bring them food, or in any way assist
in concealing them. The greatness of their sufferings does not depend
merely upon the testimony of their own letters. Roger Gysbert, a Dutch
Protestant and a resident in Japan, between the years 1622 and 1629,
wrote an affecting narrative of it, and the general fact is strongly
stated in Caron’s account of Japan, written a few years later.
Gysbert, in his narrative[111], relates the martyrdom of more than
five hundred persons; but there was a still larger amount of suffering
which terminated not in martyrdom, but in recantation. The Japanese
officers seldom exhibited any personal malice against the Catholics.
Their sole object was the extinction of that faith. They made it a
study to deny the crown of martyrdom so enthusiastically sought,
and by a series of protracted and ingenious tortures to force a
renunciation. For this purpose the prisoners were sprinkled with water
from the boiling sulphur springs, not far from Nagasaki, and exposed to
breathe their stifling odor. The modesty of the women was barbarously
assailed, and numerous means of protracted torture were resorted to,
such as in general proved sooner or later successful. Other means
were employed still more efficacious. All natives engaged in foreign
trade were required to give in an exact statement of their property,
which, unless the proprietors would conform to the national faith,
was declared forfeited. It was even forbidden that European merchants
should lodge in the houses of any who were or had been Catholics. At
Hirado and Nagasaki all heads of families were obliged to swear, in
the presence of an idol, that there were no Catholics in their houses,
and, according to the Japanese usage, to sign this declaration with
their blood. From Melchior Santvoort, an old Dutchman, one of the
companions of Adams in the first Dutch voyage to Japan, and a resident
at Nagasaki, the authorities were indeed satisfied to take instead a
declaration that he was a Hollander,—a circumstance which gave occasion
to the scandal at which Kämpfer is so indignant, that the Hollanders
were accustomed to report themselves to the Japanese authorities as not
Christians, but Dutchmen. All who refused to conform to the national
worship were deprived of their employments, and driven out to live as
they could among the barren mountains. The seafaring people had been
mostly Catholics, but no Catholic was henceforth to be permitted to
sail on board any ship. So successful were these means, that although
when Gysbert first visited Nagasaki, in 1626, it was said to contain
forty thousand native Christians, when he left it, in 1629, there was
not one who admitted himself to be such.
In the midst of these martyrdoms the Jesuits were called upon to suffer
still severer torments, in new attacks upon their policy and conduct in
Japan, published throughout Europe. Father Collado, a Dominican, for
some time resident at Nagasaki, who returned to Europe in 1622, was
known to have gone home charged with accusations against the Jesuits;
by way of answer to which a memorial was transmitted, prepared by the
provincial Father Pacheco, who, four years after, himself suffered
martyrdom at the stake. Nor was Collado their only assailant. Among
those arrested in 1622 was Father Sotelo, that same enterprising
Franciscan of whom already we have had occasion to make mention.
Insisting upon his character of legate from the Pope, he had disobeyed
the orders of his superiors, had sailed from New Spain to Manila,
and had contrived to get a passage thence to Nagasaki, in a Chinese
vessel, under the character of a merchant. But the captain detected and
betrayed him; he was immediately arrested and thrown into prison, and
in 1624 was put to death.
In 1628 there was published at Madrid what purported to be a letter
from Sotelo to Pope Urban VIII, written in Latin, dated just before his
martyrdom, and containing, under the form of a narrative of his own
proceedings, a violent attack upon the Jesuits, and their conduct in
Japan. Not liking to be thus attacked as it were by a martyr from his
grave, they denied its authenticity. A memorial of Collado, printed
in 1633, reiterated the same charges, to most of which it must be
admitted that the replies made on behalf of the Jesuits are entirely
satisfactory[112].
Finding that the means as yet employed had little effect upon the
missionaries and their native assistants, a new and more effectual,
because more protracted, torture was resorted to, known in the
relations of the missionaries as the _Torment of the Fosse_. A hole was
dug in the ground, over which a gallows was erected. From this gallows
the sufferer, swathed in bandages, was suspended by his feet, being
lowered for half his length, head downward, into the hole, which was
then closed by two boards which fitted together around the victim so
as to exclude the light and air. One hand was bound behind the back,
the other was left loose, with which to make the prescribed signal of
recantation and renunciation of the foreign creed; in which case the
sufferer was at once released.
This was a most terrible trial, indeed. The victim suffered under a
continual sense of suffocation, the blood burst from the mouth, nose
and ears, with a twitching of the nerves and muscles, attended by the
most intolerable pains. Yet the sufferer, it was said, lived sometimes
for nine or ten days. The year 1633, in which this punishment was first
introduced, the second year of a new emperor, son of Shōgun Sama[113],
proved more fatal than any previous one to the new religion. In the
month of August of that year forty-two persons were burnt alive in
various parts of Japan, eleven decapitated, and sixteen suspended in
the fosse. The Dutchman Hagenaar, who was at Hirado in 1634, states,
in his printed voyages, that during the time of his visit thirty-seven
persons lost their lives at that place on the charge of being
Catholics. Five of these perished by the torment of the fosse, others
were beheaded, others cut to pieces, and others burnt.
What at last struck the deepest horror to the souls of the few
surviving Jesuits, and was greatly improved in Europe to the damage of
the Company, by its enemies, was the apostasy of Father Christopher
Ferreyra, a Portuguese, an old missionary, the provincial of the
order, and the administrator of the bishopric. He was taken in 1633
at Nagasaki, and being suspended in the fosse, after five hours he
gave the fatal signal of renunciation. After having been kept some
time in prison, and given what information he could for the detection
of those of his late brethren still concealed in Japan, he was set
at liberty; and, having assumed the Japanese dress and a Japanese
name, he lived for several years at Nagasaki. He had been compelled
to marry a Japanese woman, who was very rich, being the widow of a
Chinese goldsmith, who had been executed for some offence; but the
Jesuits comforted themselves with the idea that the marriage was never
consummated; and they even got up a report that in his old age this
renegade brother recovered his courage, and having, on his death-bed,
confessed himself a Christian, was immediately hurried off to perish a
martyr by that very torment of the fosse, the terror of which had first
made and had so long kept him an apostate. But for this fine story
there seems to have been no foundation except the wishes and hopes of
those who circulated it.
As a further security against the surreptitious introduction of
missionaries, the policy was adopted, in 1635, of confining the
Portuguese sailors and merchants to the little artificial island of
Deshima, in the harbor of Nagasaki, a spot but just large enough to
hold the necessary residences and warehouses. Shortly after the issue
of this edict, the people of the kingdom of Arima, all of them still
Catholic except the king and the nobility, seeing no other hope,
broke out into open revolt. They were headed by a descendant of their
ancient kings, and mustering, it is said, to the number of thirty-seven
thousand, took possession of the fortress of Shimabara, situated about
due east from Nagasaki, on the gulf of the same name. Here they were
besieged; and the place being taken in 1638, those who held it were cut
off to a man.
The Portuguese were accused of having encouraged this revolt; in
consequence of which an edict was issued, in 1638, not only banishing
all the Portuguese, but forbidding also any Japanese to go out of the
country. That edict, as given by Kämpfer, was as follows:
“No Japanese ship or boat whatever, nor any native of Japan, shall
presume to go out of the country: who acts contrary to this shall die,
and the ship with the crew and goods aboard shall be sequestered till
further order.
“All Japanese who return from abroad shall be put to death.
“Whoever discovers a priest shall have a reward of 400 to 500 _shuets_
of silver, and for every Christian in proportion[114].
“All persons who propagate the doctrine of the Christians, or bear
this scandalous name, shall be imprisoned in the _Ombra_, or common
jail of the town.
“The whole race of the Portuguese, with their mothers, nurses, and
whatever belongs to them, shall be banished to Macao.
“Whoever presumes to bring a letter from abroad, or to return after
he hath been banished, shall die with all his family; also whoever
presumes to intercede for them shall be put to death.
“No nobleman nor any soldier shall be suffered to purchase anything of
a foreigner.”
The Portuguese ships of 1639 were sent back with a copy of this edict,
without being suffered to discharge their cargoes. The corporation
of the city of Macao, greatly alarmed at the loss of a lucrative
traffic, on which their prosperity mainly depended, sent deputies
to solicit some modification of this edict. But the only reply made
by the emperor was to cause these deputies themselves, with their
attendants, to the number of sixty-one persons, to be seized and put
to death, as violators of the very edict against which they had been
sent to remonstrate. Thirteen only, of the lowest rank, were sent
back to Macao, August, 1640, with this account of the fate of their
company[115].