Soon after the departure of this vessel, a Spanish gentleman arrived from Manila with presents and a letter to the emperor from a new governor of the Philippines, remonstrating, though in measured terms, against the confiscation of the “San Philip” and the execution of the Spanish ecclesiastics, several of whom had entered Japan in the character of envoys from his predecessor. The letter requested the bodies of those martyrs, and, for the future, safety and kind treatment to all Spanish vessels driven accidentally to Japan. Taikō-Sama, in reply, justified his proceedings against the missionaries, not only because they had disregarded his repeated orders to leave Japan, but because, insinuating their creed into the minds of his subjects, they designed finally to get possession of the country as the Spaniards had done of Manila. His excuse for the confiscation of the “San Philip” was that she had attempted to enter a port of Japan in violation of law. He refused to give up any part of her cargo, but offered to restore a number of slaves which had belonged to her, at the same time expressing a willingness to consent to a regulated trade with the Spaniards, provided they would promise to bring no priests. A report that the emperor was about to visit Nagasaki led to the destruction in the adjoining provinces of not less than a hundred and thirty-seven churches and of many houses which had belonged to the Jesuits; and, to appease the authorities, a new embarkation of missionaries became necessary, limited, however, by reason of the smallness of the vessel, to eleven persons. [Illustration: FEUDAL STRONGHOLDS: HIMEJI CASTLE; NAGOYA CASTLE] In the midst of these alarms news arrived that the emperor had been seized with a sudden and violent sickness, apparently a dysentery, which, after two months’ struggles against it, brought him to his end. He died in September, 1598, at the age of sixty-four, retaining his absolute authority to the last. During his latter years two thoughts seem principally to have engrossed him,—the securing divine honors to himself, and the transmission of his authority to his infant son, Hideyori, not yet above three or four years old. With the first object in view, though really (at least, so the missionaries concluded) without any religion at all, he had rebuilt, in a magnificent manner, many temples and Buddhist monasteries destroyed by Nobunaga, by himself, or by the accidents of war. He also had erected, in a new quarter which he had added to Miyako, a splendid temple, which he caused to be consecrated to himself in the character of the new Hachiman, that being the title of a Kami celebrated for his conquests, and regarded as the god of war.