Then they hastened to the city of Nangasaqui,
the chief of Christian communities in Japon, where on August 16, 1627,
they arrested and burned alive father Fray Francisco de Santa Maria,
and the lay brother, Fray Bartholome, both Franciscans, together with
their servants and other men and women. Others they beheaded, among
whom the lot fell to a woman with three children, two of whom were
two years old and the other older. On the sixth of September of the
same year, they arrested and burned alive a Japanese father of Ours,
together with two chiefs, his servants. The governor and president
of that city was present at all these murders. He, in conformity
with his orders, tried to make all the Christian inhabitants recant,
without respect to age or estate, and to persuade them all to adopt
some one of the Japanese sects, making use of many ingenious artifices
for this purpose. Seeing that he could not effect his purpose, he
tried locking some of them in their houses, nailing up the doors,
and depriving them of all communication with relatives and friends, to
which end he set guards around them. Some weak-spirited persons obeyed
him; but the greater number, both chiefs and common people, resisted
him. The governor, seeing that so many resisted, as he had no orders
to take their lives, but only to send them as prisoners to the court,
sent those whom he thought best, and among them fifteen of the most
prominent persons. Fearing because some of these were persons of rank,
and had many relatives, and some of them were actually officials in
the same city, in order to prevent any revolt from arising he asked
the neighboring tonos for a large number of soldiers. A great many
of these came, who were lodged throughout the city; but, seeing that
there was no resistance he ordered them back to their fortresses,
and, the confessors being much rejoiced, he sent them prisoners to
the court. Others are kept in captivity until the arrival of a decree
from the court. Four distinguished families were exiled to Macan, with
four hundred and thirty of the common people, who were driven to the
neighboring mountains as a warning and intimidation to many others,
and all intercourse and communication with them was cut off. It was
ordered that no one should admit them to their houses. They were
commanded not to build huts, even for the infant children, to defend
them from the inclemencies of the weather. Guards were set over them
so that no one shoul