k place everywhere.

While this enthusiasm was at its height, Navarette, vice-provincial
of the Dominicans, and Ayala, vice-provincial of the Augustins,
emerged from hiding, and robed in their full canonicals, commenced an
open propaganda, heralding their approach by a letter addressed to
Omura and couched in the most defiant terms. Thus challenged, Omura
was obliged to act promptly, especially as Navarette declared that he
(Navarette) did not recognize the Emperor of Japan but only the
Emperor of Heaven. The two fanatics were seized, conveyed secretly to
the island of Takashima, and there decapitated; their coffins being
weighted with big stones and sunk in the sea, so as to prevent a
repetition of the scenes witnessed at the tomb of the fathers
mentioned above. Thereupon, the newly elected superior of the
Dominicans at once sent three of his priests to preach in Omura's
territories, and two of them, having been seized, were cast into
prison where they remained for five years. Even more directly defiant
was the attitude of the next martyred priest, an old Franciscan monk,
Juan de Santa Martha. He had for three years suffered all the horrors
of a medieval Japanese prison, yet when it was proposed to release
him and deport him to New Spain, his answer was that, if released, he
would stay in Japan and preach there. He laid his head on the block
in August, 1618.

Throughout the next four years, however, no other foreign missionary
was capitally punished in Japan, though many arrived and continued
their propagandism. During that interval, also, there occurred
another incident calculated to fix upon the Christians still deeper
suspicion of political designs. In a Portuguese ship, captured by the
Dutch, a letter was found instigating Japanese converts to revolt,
and promising that, when the number of disaffected became sufficient,
men-of-war would be sent from Portugal to aid them. Another factor
tending to invest the converts with political potentialities was the
writing of pamphlets by apostates, attributing the zeal of foreign
propagandists solely to traitorous motives. Further, the Spanish and
Portuguese propagandists were indicted in a despatch addressed to the
second Tokugawa shogun, in 1620, by the admiral in command of the
British and Dutch fleet of defence, then cruising in Oriental waters.
The admiral unreservedly charged the friars with treacherous
machinations, and warned the shogun against the aggressive design