mselves as ambassadors,
arrived with a suite of 46 Orientals, they were all executed.

In the same year the Governor of the Philippines called a Congress of
local officials and ecclesiastics, amongst whom it was agreed that to
send missionaries to Japan was to send them directly to death, and it
was thenceforth resolved to abandon Catholic missions in that country.

Secret missions and consequent executions still continued until about
the year 1642, when the Dutch took Tanchiu--in Formosa Island--from
the Spaniards, and intercepted the passage to Japan of priests and
merchants alike. The conquest of Japan was a feat which all the
artifice of King Philip IV.'s favourites and their monastic agents
could not compass.

In 1862, during the Pontificate of Pius IX., 620 missionaries who had
met with martyrdom in Japan, in the 17th century, were canonized with
great pomp and appropriate ceremony in Rome.

CHAPTER VI

Conflicts with the Dutch

_Consequent_ on the union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain
(1581-1640), the feuds, as between nations, diplomatically subsided,
although the individual antagonism was as rife as ever.

Spanish and Portuguese interests in the Moluccas, as elsewhere, were
thenceforth officially mutual. In the Molucca group, the old contests
between the once rival kingdoms had estranged the natives from their
ancient compulsory alliances. Anti-Portuguese and Philo-Portuguese
parties had sprung up amongst the petty sovereignties, but the
Portuguese fort and factory established in Ternate Island were held
for many years, despite all contentions. But another rivalry, as
formidable and more detrimental than that of the Portuguese in days
gone by, now menaced Spanish ascendancy.

From the close of the 16th century up to the year of the "Family
Compact" Wars (1763), Holland and Spain were relentless foes. To
recount the numerous combats between their respective fleets during
this period, would itself require a volume. It will suffice here to
show the bearing of these political conflicts upon the concerns of the
Philippine Colony. The Treaty of Antwerp, which was wrung from the
Spaniards in 1609, 28 years after the union of Spain and Portugal,
broke the scourge of their tyranny, whilst it failed to assuage
the mutual antipathy. One of the consequences of the "Wars of the
Flanders," which terminated with this treaty, was that the Dutch were
obliged to seek in the Far East the merchandise which ha