CHAPTER XXIV
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.
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].