INTRODUCTION, 37 



world. The departure of tlie English took place before the bloody persecution of the Christians 

 reached its height. They left native Christians in Japan ; we are not prepared to believe they 

 would ever have deliberately assisted in their extermination. It was, perhaps, fortunate for 

 them that they were out of the Kingdom before the bombardment of Simabara. 



Thirteen years after the abandonment of their factory, the English were disposed to make 

 a new attempt. Acccordingly, four vessels were dispatched, but they were ungraciously received 

 at Nagasaki, the only port then open to foreigners, and occupied by the Dutch, and they returned 

 without accomplishing their object. The Dutch were now becoming all-powerful in the east ; 

 established on the ruins of the Portuguese dominion at Amboyna and Timor, fortified in Batavia, 

 masters of the Moluccas, Ceylon, tlie coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, they were not likely to 

 admit a rival among them, and to them the English, without doubt justly, attributed the failure 

 of this attempt to re-establish themselves in Japan. 



But they deemed it best, for a time, to keep still ; dark days were coming upon England ; 

 the country had to pass through the civil wars that marked the reign of the first Charles. It 

 was no time to undertake bold commercial enterprises. The East India Company consequently 

 did but little more for many years than keep up an intercourse with Bantam. They wanted 

 a time of peace and a firmly settled government before they made further efforts. 



At length, in 1673, the company renewed its efforts to re-enter Japan. It had received a fresb 

 and much enlarged grant of powers from the King, and was in fact made little less than a 

 sovereign power in the east. The ship that was now sent was called the "Return." A journal, 

 as yet unpublished, was kept of the voyage ; and Fraissinet says it is now in the possession of 

 the Southwell family at Loudon. He has had access to it, and furnishes us with many interesting 

 extracts ; observing very justly that it strikingly illustrates three particulars — the remarkable 

 circumspection of the Japanese, their extreme opposition to the introduction of any strangers 

 among them, and, above all, their unappeasable hatred of the Portuguese. 



Charles II, it will be remembered, had married a princess of Braganza, and was therefore 

 allied to the royal family of Portugal ; and the Dutch were by no means backward in commu- 

 nicating this fact to the Japanese. Accordingly, on the appearance of the English ship in the 

 Japanese waters, she was, from this cause alone, viewed with unusual suspicion. We give 

 from the journal alluded to above, or rather from the French version of it, some of the 

 conversations between the English and the Japanese ofiicials. 



"Are you English?" 



"Yes. We have come here with the permission of our sovereign, the King of England, to 

 carry on trade for the East India Company, and re-establish the commerce which our countrymen 

 commenced with you and left fifty years ago. We have letters from our King, and from the 

 company, to his Majesty the Emperor of Japan;" and with this was handed to the Japanese 

 commissioner a copy of the privileges of trade already set before the reader. This was written 

 in the Japanese character. 



The governor next charged the interpreter to ask ' ' if England was at peace with Portugal 

 and Spain ; if our King had been long married to the daughter of the King of Portugal ; 

 whether there were any children of the marriage; what was our religion, and what sort of 

 merchandize we had?" 



We answered that just now we are at peace with all the world ; that our King had been 

 married eleven years ; that the Queen had no children ; that we were Christians as the Dutch 

 were, but not papists. As to our merchandize, the cargo of the ship was a general one. 



