[100] Captain Saris’ account of his voyage and travels in Japan (which agrees remarkably with the contemporaneous observations of Don Rodrigo, and with the subsequent ones of Kämpfer and others), may be found in Purchas, “His Pilgrimes,” part i, book iv, chap. i, sect. 4-8. Cocks’ not less curious observations may be found in chap. iii, sect. 1-3, of the same book and part. There is also a readable summary of what was then known of Japan, in Purchas, “His Pilgrimage,” book v, chap. xv.
Rundall, in his “Memorials of the Empire of Japan,” printed by the Hackluyt Society, 1850, has republished Adams’ first letter, from two MSS. in the archives of the East India Company; but the variations from the text, as given by Purchas, are hardly as important as he represents. He gives also from the same records four other letters from Adams, not before printed. It seems from these letters, and from certain memoranda of Cocks, that there were three reasons why Adams did not return with Saris, notwithstanding the emperor’s free consent to his doing so. Besides his wife and daughter in England, he had also a wife, son, and daughter in Japan. Though he had the estate mentioned as given him by the emperor (called Hemmi, about eight miles from Uraga), on which were near a hundred households, his vassals, over whom he had power of life and death, yet he had little money, and did not like to go home with an empty purse. He had quarrelled with Saris, who had attempted to drive a hard bargain with him. The East India Company had advanced twenty pounds to his wife in England. Saris wanted him to serve the company for that sum and such additional pay as they might see fit to give. But Adams, whom the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, were all anxious to engage in their service, insisted upon a stipulated hire. He asked twelve pounds a month, but consented to take a hundred pounds a year, to be paid at the end of two years.
See “History of the English Factory at Hirado,” in vol. xxvi. of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and “Diary of Richard Cocks,” edited by Mr. N. Murakami, and published in Tōkyō in 1899.—Edr.
[101] He was deified, and is still worshipped under the name of Gongen-Sama, given to him after his death. It is from him that the reigning emperors of Japan trace their descent. He is buried at the temple of Nikkō, three days’ journey from Yedo, of the splendor of which marvellous stories are told. Caron, who wrote about the time it was built, speaks as if he had seen it. In 1782, M. Titsingh, then Dutch director, solicited permission to visit this temple, but was refused, as there was no precedent for such a favor.
[102] These modified privileges have been printed for the first time by Rundall.
[103] Lopo de Vega, the poet, who held the office of procurator fiscal to the apostolic chamber of the archbishopric of Toledo, celebrated the constancy of the Japanese martyrs, in a pamphlet entitled “Triumpho de la Fe en los Regnos del Japon, pas los annos de 1614 y 1615,” published in 1617. “Take away from this work,” says Charlevoix, “the Latin and Spanish verses, the quotations foreign to the subject, and the flourish of the style, and there will be nothing left of it.” The subject was much more satisfactorily treated by Nicholas Trigault, himself a very distinguished member of the Chinese mission, which he had joined in 1610. He returned to Europe in 1615, travelling on foot through Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, to obtain a fresh supply of laborers. Besides an account of the Jesuit mission to China (from which, next to Marco Polo’s travels, Europe gathered its first distinct notions of that empire), and a summary of the Japanese mission from 1609 to 1612, published during this visit to Europe, just before his departure, in 1618 (taking with him forty-four missionaries, who had volunteered to follow him to China), he completed four books concerning the triumphs of the Christians in the late persecution in Japan, to which, while at Goa, on his way to China, he added a fifth book, bringing down the narrative to 1616. The whole, derived from the annual Japanese letters, was printed in 1623, in a small quarto of five hundred and twenty pages, illustrated by numerous engravings of martyrdoms, and containing also a short addition, bringing down the story to the years 1617-1620, and a list of Japanese martyrs, to the number of two hundred and sixty-eight. There is also added a list of thirty-eight houses and residences (including two colleges, one at Arima, the other at Nagasaki) which the Jesuits had been obliged to abandon; and of five Franciscan, four Dominican, and two Augustinian convents, from which the inmates had been driven. These works of Trigault, published originally in Latin, were translated into French and Spanish. Various other accounts of the same persecution appeared in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. “A Brief Relation of the Persecution lately made against the Catholic Christians of Japan” was published at London, 1616. Meanwhile Purchas, in the successive editions of his “Pilgrimage,” gave an account of the Japanese missions, which is the best and almost the only one (though now obsolete and forgotten) in the English language. That contained in the fourth edition (annexed as a fifth part to the “Pilgrimes”), and published in 1625, is the fullest. Captain Saris, according to Purchas, ascribed the persecution to the discovery, by the Japanese, that the Jesuits, under the cloak of religion, were but merchants.
[104] Such was the charge of the English. The Dutch narratives, however, abound with similar charges against the English. Both probably were true enough, as both nations captured all the Chinese junks they met.
[105] The date, as given by Purchas (evidently by a misprint), is 1610.
[106] The “Swan” and the “Attendance.” The number of English runaways was three, not six.—K. M.
[107] From Jacatra Pring proceeded to England with a cargo of pepper. It would seem that he had not forgotten his early voyages to the coast of America, for while his ship lay in the road of Saldanha, near the Cape of Good Hope, a contribution of seventy pounds eight shillings and sixpence was raised among the ship’s company to endow a school, to be called the East India School, in the colony of Virginia. Other contributions were made for this school, and the Virginia Company endowed it with a farm of a thousand acres, which they sent tenants to cultivate; but this, like the Virginia University, and many other public-spirited and promising enterprises, was ruined and annihilated by the fatal Indian massacre of 1622.