opoly hitherto had been mainly secured by
the Jesuit fathers, it was natural for the new-comers to represent the
motive of these fathers in an unfavorable and suspicious light. "Indeed,"
as Hildreth(206) says, "they had only to confirm the truth of what the
Portuguese and Spanish said of each other to excite in the minds of the
Japanese rulers the gravest distrust as to the designs of the priests of
both nations."(207)

Whether it is true as charged that the minds of the Japanese rulers had
been poisoned against the Jesuit fathers by misrepresentation and
falsehood, it may be impossible to determine definitely; but it is fair to
infer that the cruel and intolerant policy of the Spanish and Portuguese
would be fully set forth and the danger to the Japanese empire from the
machinations of the foreign religious teachers held up in the worst light.

During the latter years of Ieyasu's life, after he had settled the affairs
of the empire and put the shogunate upon a permanent basis, we see growing
evidence of his prejudice against Christianity. That he had such prejudice
in a very pronounced form is clear from his reference to the "false and
corrupt school" in chapter xxxi. of the _Legacy_. And he had inherited
from Taiko Sama the conviction that the spread of this foreign faith was a
menace to the peace of the empire. The instructions(208) which were issued
to the members of the Society of Jesus, however, forbade any father to
meddle in secular affairs or to interfere in any way with the political
concerns of the government in which they were laboring. That there were
occasional instances of the disregard of this regulation by the
enthusiastic members of the order may be supposed, but it will be unjust
and unfounded to attribute to this society a settled policy of
interference in the affairs of the nations where they were employed as
missionaries.

Ieyasu, evidently having made up his mind that for the safety of the
empire Christianity must be extirpated, in 1614 issued an edict(209) that
the members of all religious orders, whether European or Japanese, should
be sent out of the country; that the churches which had been erected in
various localities should be pulled down, and that the native adherents of
the faith should be compelled to renounce it. In part execution of this
edict all the members of the Society of Jesus, native and foreign, were
ordered to be sent to Nagasaki. Native Christians were sent to Tsugaru,
the