ty was
finished. The officers of each street were required to be present. The
metal plate on which was a figure of the Saviour upon the cross was laid
upon the floor. Then the head of the house, his family, and servants of
both sexes, old and young, and any lodgers that might be in the house,
were called into the room. The secretary of the inquisitor thereupon made
a list of the household and called upon them one by one to set their feet
on the plate. Even young children not able to walk were carried by their
mothers and made to step on the images with their feet. Then the head of
the family put his seal to the list as a certificate to be laid before the
governor that the inquisition had been performed in his house. If any
refused thus to trample on the cross they were at once turned over to the
proper officers to be tortured as the cases required.

This same method of trial was used in the provinces about Nagasaki, the
governor lending to the officers the plate which they might use.

Without following the entire series of events which resulted in the
extirpation of Christianity, it will be sufficient to give a brief
narrative of the closing act in this fearful tragedy. It is just, however,
to explain that the Shimabara rebellion was not due to the Christians
alone, but that other causes contributed to and perhaps originated it. In
view, however, of the cruel persecutions to which the Christians were
subjected, it is not surprising that they should have been driven to
engage in such a rebellion as that in Arima.(216) The wonder rather is
that they were not often and in many places impelled to take up arms
against the inhumanities of their rulers. The explanation of this absence
of resistance will be found in the scattered condition of the Christian
communities. Nowhere, unless it might be in Nagasaki, was the number of
converts collected in one place at all considerable. They were everywhere
overawed by the organized power of the government, and the experience of
those who joined in this Arima insurrection did not encourage a repetition
of its horrors.

The beginning of the revolt is traced to the misgovernment of the daimyo
of Arima. The original daimyo had been transferred by the shogun to
another province, and when he removed from Arima he left nearly all his
old retainers behind him. The newly instituted daimyo, on the contrary,
who came to occupy the vacated province brought with him a full complement
of his own