s of
Philip of Spain.

This cumulative evidence dispelled the last doubts of the Japanese,
and a time of sharp suffering ensued for the fathers and their
converts. There were many shocking episodes. Among them may be
mentioned the case of Zufliga, son of the marquis of Villamanrica. He
visited Japan as a Dominican in 1618, but the governor of Nagasaki
persuaded him to withdraw. Yielding for the moment, he returned two
years later, accompanied by Father Flores. They travelled in a vessel
commanded by a Japanese Christian, and off Formosa she was overhauled
by an English warship, which took off the two priests and handed them
over to the Dutch at Hirado. There they were tortured and held in
prison for sixteen months, when an armed attempt made by some
Japanese Christians to rescue them precipitated their fate. By order
from Yedo, Zuniga, Flores, and the Japanese master of the vessel
which had carried them, were roasted to death in Nagasaki on August
19, 1622. Thus the measures adopted against the missionaries are seen
to have gradually increased in severity. The first two fathers put to
death, De l'Assumpcion and Machado, were beheaded in 1617, not by the
common executioner but by one of the principal officers of the
daimyo. The next two, Navarette and Ayala, were decapitated by the
executioner. Then, in 1618, Juan de Santa Martha was executed like a
common criminal, his body being dismembered and his head exposed.
Finally, in 1622, Zuniga and Flores were burned alive.

The same year was marked by the "great martyrdom" at Nagasaki, when
nine foreign priests went to the stake together with nineteen
Japanese converts. Apprehension of a foreign invasion seems to have
greatly troubled the shogun at this time. He had sent an envoy to
Europe who, after seven years abroad, returned on the eve of the
"great martyrdom," and made a report thoroughly unfavourable to
Christianity. Hidetada therefore refused to give audience to the
Philippine embassy in 1624, and ordered that all Spaniards should be
deported from Japan. It was further decreed that no Japanese
Christians should thenceforth be allowed to go to sea in search of
commerce, and that although non-Christians or men who had apostatized
might travel freely, they must not visit the Philippines.

Thus ended all intercourse between Japan and Spain. The two countries
had been on friendly terms for thirty-two years, and during that time
a widespread conviction that Christianity