Dutch ships, by his
information given to Iyeyas[)u], also helped much to destroy the Jesuits
influence and to hurt their cause, while both the Dutch and English were
ever busy in disseminating both correct information and polemic
exaggeration, forging letters and delivering up to death by fire the
_padres_ when captured at sea.

In general, however, it may be said that while Christian converts and
the priests were roughly handled in the South, yet there was
considerable missionary activity and success in the North. Converts were
made and Christian congregations were gathered in regions remote from
Ki[=o]to and Yedo, which latter place, like St. Petersburg in the West,
was being made into a large city. Even outlying islands, such as Sado,
had their churches and congregations.

The Anti-Christian Policy of the Tokugawas.

The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,[16] however, were
probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the
Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the
government was especially aroused against the _bateren_, as the people
called the _padres_, by their open and persistent violation of Japanese
law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles
had been sent to work the mines, Iyeyas[)u] believed he had obtained
documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long
suspected--the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts
and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject
state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he
believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo
Sh[=o]gun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January
27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple
enemies--of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This
proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come
to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp
possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof
of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in
this state paper, Iyeyas[)u] shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese
patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he
tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two
Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen
foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native pries