ns in his service, and the edict was promulgated with more
than usual severity, although its enforcement was deferred until the
next year on account of the obsequies of Ieyasu. This edict of 1616
differed from that issued by Ieyasu in 1614, since the latter did not
explicitly prescribe the death-penalty for converts refusing to
apostatize. But both agreed in indicating expulsion as the sole
manner of dealing with the foreign priests. It, is also noteworthy
that, just as the edict of Ieyasu was immediately preceded by
statements from Will Adams about the claim of Spain and Portugal to
absorb all non-Christian countries, so the edict of Hidetada had for
preface Cock's attribution of aggressive designs to the Spanish ships
at Kagoshima in conjunction with Christian converts. Not without
justice, therefore, have the English been charged with some share of
responsibility for the terrible things that ultimately befell the
propagandists and the professors of Christianity in Japan. As for the
shogun, Hidetada, and his advisers, it is probable that they did not
foresee much occasion for actual recourse to violence. They knew that
a great majority of the converts had joined the Christian Church at
the instance, or by the command, of their local rulers, and nothing
can have seemed less likely than that a creed thus lightly embraced
would be adhered to in defiance of torture and death. The foreign
propagandists also might have escaped all peril by obeying the
official edict and leaving Japan. They suffered because they defied
the laws of the land.

Some fifty of them happened to be in Nagasaki at the time of
Hidetada's edict. Several of these were apprehended and deported, but
a number returned almost immediately. This happened under the
jurisdiction of Omura, who had been specially charged with the duty
of sending away the bateren (padres). He seems to have concluded that
a striking example must be furnished, and he therefore ordered the
seizure and decapitation of two fathers, De l'Assumpcion and Machado.
The result completely falsified his calculations, for so far from
proving a deterrent, the fate of the two fathers appealed widely to
the people's sense of heroism. Multitudes flocked to the grave in
which the two coffins were buried. The sick were carried thither to
be restored to health, and the Christian converts derived new courage
from the example of these martyrs. Numerous conversions and numerous
returns of apostates too