the
greate shipp cut her cable in the hawse so as to escape, she had been
arrested." It was this same Cocks who told a Japanese "admirall" that
"My opinion was he might doe better to put it into the Emperour's
mynd to make a conquest of the Manillas, and drive those small crew
of Spaniards from thence."

In fact, none of the four Occidental nationalities then in Japan had
any monopoly of slandering its rivals. The accusation preferred by
Cocks, however, must have possessed special significance, confirming,
as it did, what the pilot of the San Felipe had said twenty years
previously as to the political uses to which the propagandists of
Christianity were put by the King of Spain, and what Will Adams had
said four years earlier as to the Imperial doctrine of Spain and
Portugal that the annexation of a non-Christian country was always
justifiable. The "greate shipps out of New Spaine," laden with
soldiers and treasure and under orders to combine with any Christian
converts willing to revolt against the Yedo Government, were concrete
evidence of the truth of the Spanish sailor's revelation and of the
English exile's charge. It has always to be remembered, too, that
Kyushu, the headquarters of Christianity in Japan, did not owe to the
Tokugawa shoguns the same degree of allegiance that it had been
forced to render to Hideyoshi. A colossal campaign such as the latter
had conducted against the southern island, in 1587, never commended
itself to the ambition of Ieyasu or to that of his comparatively
feeble successor, Hidetada. Hence, the presence of Spanish or
Portuguese ships in Satsuma suggested danger of an exceptional
degree.

In the very month (September, 1616) when Cocks "cried quittance with
the Spaniards," a new anti-Christian edict was promulgated by
Hidetada, son and successor of Ieyasu. It pronounced sentence of
exile against all Christian priests, not excluding even those whose
presence had been sanctioned for the purpose of ministering to the
Portuguese merchants; it forbade the Japanese, under penalty of being
burned alive and having all their property confiscated, to connect
themselves in any way with the Christian propagandists or with their
co-operators or servants, and above all, to show them any
hospitality. The same penalties were extended to women and children,
and to the five neighbours on both sides of a convert's abode, unless
these became informers. Every feudal chief was forbidden to keep
Christia