After many disappointments, Sotelo with this ambassador set sail at length for New Spain, about the end of the year 1613, in a vessel belonging to Masamune; and, by way of the city of Mexico, proceeded to Seville and Madrid, where they arrived in October, 1614. Thence they proceeded to Rome, and had an audience of the Pope, November 30, 1615, by whom Sotelo was nominated bishop for the north and east parts of Japan, and his legate for the whole of it[84]. Having reached New Spain on his return, he found in the port of Acapulco a Japanese vessel belonging to Masamune, which, having disposed of a cargo of Japanese goods, took on freight for Manila a part of the suite of a new Spanish governor of the Philippines, intending to purchase at Manila a cargo of Chinese silks. But the Council of the Indies, under the influence of the Jesuits, and on the plea that the nomination of all Eastern bishops belonged to the king, opposed Sotelo’s consecration; and the merchants of Manila, alarmed at the rivalry of New Spain for the Japanese trade, made such representations that, on his arrival there, his papers were seized, and he himself was sent back to the superiors of his order in New Mexico.

But long before the occurrence of these events—in fact, previous to the departure of Sotelo from Japan—the Catholic faith there had received a blow from which it never recovered, and which brought it to speedy ruin.

CHAPTER XXII

Origin and Commencement of English Intercourse with Japan—Captain Saris’ Voyage thither, and Travels and Observations there—New Spanish Embassy from the Philippines—Commercial Rivalry of the Dutch and English—Richard Cocks, Head of the English Factory—A. D. 1611-1613.

The pilot, Adams, having heard from Spex that certain English merchants had established themselves in the island of Java, he wrote to them, under date of October 22, 1611, giving an account of himself, and enclosing a letter to his wife, which he besought these unknown countrymen of his to convey to his friends at Limehouse or in Kent, so that his wife, “in a manner a widow,” and his fatherless children, might hear of him, and he of them, before his death. “You shall understand,” wrote Adams, “that the Hollanders have here an Indies of money, so that they need not to bring silver out of Holland to the East Indies, for in Japan there is much gold and silver to serve their turn in other places where need requireth.” He enumerated as vendible in Japan for ready money, raw silk, damask, black taffetas, black and red cloth of the best kinds, lead, etc. To a somewhat exaggerated, and otherwise not very correct account of the extent and the geography of the Japanese dominions, he added the following description of the inhabitants: “The people of this island of Japan are good of nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war. Their justice is severely executed, and without partiality, upon transgressors. They are governed in great civility. I think no land in the world better governed by civil policy. The people are very superstitious in their religion, and are of diverse opinions. There are many Jesuit and Franciscan friars in this land, and they have converted many to be Christians, and have many churches in the island.”

This letter, which was given in charge to the master’s mate of the Dutch vessel, must have reached the English East India Company’s factory at Bantam, in Java, previous to the first of June, 1612, for on that day an answer to it was despatched by the “Globe,” which had just arrived from England, and which, sailing from Bantam to Patania, met there the same master’s mate who had brought Adams’ letter, and who, being just about to return to Japan in a Dutch pinnace, promised to deliver the answer.

Already, however, independently of Adams’ letter, a project had been started in England for opening a trade with Japan, founded upon a knowledge of Adams’ being there, derived from the crew of the Dutch ship, the “Red Lion.” The “Globe,” which left England January 5, 1611, carried letters to Adams to that effect, and she was followed in April by the “Clove,” the “Thomas,” and the “Hector,” under the command of Captain John Saris, an old adventurer in the East, and a former resident of Bantam, with letters from the king of England to the emperor of Japan[85].

After touching, trading, negotiating and fighting, at Socotra, Mocha, and other ports of the Red Sea, Saris arrived at Bantam in October, 1612. Soon after his arrival the letter of Adams was re-read in presence of the assembled merchants; and doubtless it encouraged Saris in his project of visiting Japan. Having taken in seven hundred sacks of pepper, in addition to the broadcloths, gunpowder, and other goods brought from England, Saris sailed on the 14th of January, 1618, in the “Clove,” his crew consisting of seventy-four English, one Spaniard, one Japanese, to serve as an interpreter, he speaking also the Malay language, which Captain Saris understood, and five Swarts, probably Malays.

Passing in sight of the south coast of Celebes, Saris touched at several of the ports in the group of the Moluccas, occupied at that time, some of them by Dutch and others by Spanish factories,—the Spaniards from Manila having come to the rescue of the Portuguese, whom the Dutch had driven out. Regarding all new comers (if of any other nation than their own) with scarcely less suspicion and hostility than they did each other, and both of them joining to oppress and plunder the unhappy natives, “who were wrought upon,” so Saris says, “to spoil one another in civil war,” the Dutch and Spaniards, secure in strong forts, sat by and looked on, “prepared to take the bone from him that would wrest it from his fellow.” The Dutch fort at Buchian had a garrison of thirty Dutch soldiers, and eleven Dutch women, “able to withstand the fury of the Spaniard, or other nation whatsoever, being of a very lusty, large breed.”

The Dutch commander would not allow the natives to trade with the English, even to the extent of a single katty of cloves, threatening with death those who did so, and claiming all the Spice Islands held by them as “their country, conquered by the sword they having, with much loss of blood and money, delivered the inhabitants from the tyranny of the Portuguese, and having made a perpetual contract with them for the purchase of all their spices at a fixed rate,” in the case of cloves at about eight cents the pound. This claim of exclusive right of trade Captain Saris declined to acknowledge; at the same time he professed his readiness to give the Dutch, “as neighbors and brethren in Christ,” a preference in purchasing any part of his cargo of which they might happen to stand in need.