so far as the intrigues, real or
imaginary, of the English and Dutch, to look for causes for the renewed
stimulus given at this date to the measures against Christianity.

In 1614 the edict was carried into effect, and the missionaries,
accompanied by the Japanese princes who had been in exile in Kaga, and a
number of native Christians, were made to embark from Nagasaki. Several
missionaries remained concealed in the country, and in subsequent years
not a few contrived to elude the vigilance of the authorities and to
reenter Japan. But they were all detected sooner or later, and suffered
for their temerity by their deaths.

Persecution did not stop with the expulsion of the missionaries, nor at
the death of Iyeyasu was any respite given to the native Christians. And
this brings us to the closing scene of this history--the tragedy of
Shimabara. In the autumn of 1637 the peasantry of a convert district in
Hizen, driven past endurance by the fierce ferocity of the persecution,
assembled to the number of thirty thousand, and, fortifying the castle
of Shimabara, declared open defiance to the Government; their opposition
was soon overborne; troops were sent against them, and after a short but
desperate resistance all the Christians were put to the sword. With the
rising of Shimabara, and its sanguinary suppression by the Government,
the curtain falls on the early history of Christianity in Japan.

COLLAPSE OF THE POWER OF CHARLES V

FRANCE SEIZES GERMAN BISHOPRICS

A.D. 1552

LADY C. C. JACKSON

Henry II, son of Francis I, ascended the throne of France in
1547. It had been the ambition of the French to establish
the eastern boundary of their country on the Rhine, and
thence along the summit of the Alps to the Mediterranean
Sea. Jealousy of the growing power of his father's old
enemy, the emperor Charles V, probably added to the French
King's eagerness to fulfil the desire of his people for
extension of their borders.

Charles was now occupied with the religious wars in Germany,
and Henry prepared to improve his opportunity by taking full
advantage of the Emperor's situation. The fact that the
Protestants among his own subjects were cruelly persecuted
did not deter the French monarch from furthering his
ambition by consenting to assist the German Protestants
against their own sovereign.

In 1551, when for six years there had been