e Taiko's edict. They did
indeed assemble at Hirado to the number of 120, but when they
received orders to embark at once, they decided that only those
needed for service in China should leave Japan. The rest remained and
continued to perform their religious duties as usual, under the
protection of the converted feudatories. The latter also appear to
have concluded that it was not necessary to follow Hideyoshi's
injunctions strictly concerning the expulsion of the priests. It
seemed, at first, as though nothing short of extermination was
contemplated by the Taiko. He caused all the churches in Kyoto,
Osaka, and Sakai to be pulled down, and he sent troops to raze the
Christian places of worship in Kyushu. But the troops accepted gifts
offered to them by the feudatories and left the churches standing,
while Hideyoshi not only failed to enforce his edict, but also
allowed himself in the following year, 1588, to be convinced by a
Portuguese envoy that unless the missionaries were suffered to
remain, oversea trade could not possibly be carried on in a peaceful
and orderly manner. For the sake of that trade, Hideyoshi agreed to
tolerate the Christian propagandists, and, for a time, the foreign
faith continued to flourish in Kyushu and found a favourable field
even in Kyoto.

At this time, in response to a message from the Jesuits, the viceroy
of the Indies sent an ambassador to thank Hideyoshi for the favours
he had hitherto bestowed upon the missionaries, and in the train of
this nominally secular embassy came a number of fresh Jesuits to
labour in the Japanese field. The ambassador was Valegnani, a man of
profound tact. Acting upon the Taiko's unequivocal hints, Valegnani
caused the missionaries to divest their work of all ostentatious
features and to comport themselves with the utmost circumspection, so
that official attention should not be attracted by any salient
evidences of Christian propagandism. Indeed, at this very time, as
stated above, Hideyoshi took a step which plainly showed that he
valued the continuance of trade much more highly than the extirpation
of Christianity. "Being assured that Portuguese merchants could not
frequent Japan unless they found Christian priests there, he
consented to sanction the presence of a limited number of Jesuits,"
though he was far too shrewd to imagine that their services could be
limited to men of their own nationality, and too clever to forget
that these very Portuguese, who