The new Dutch and English visitors were prompted no less by religious than by mercantile jealousies and hatreds to do all they could to diminish the credit of the Catholic missionaries; and it is by no means improbable that, as the Portuguese asserted, their suggestions had considerable weight in producing the new persecuting edicts of Ōgosho-Sama. Indeed, they had only to confirm the truth of what the Portuguese and Spanish said of each other to excite in the minds of the Japanese rulers the gravest distrust as to the designs of the priests of both nations. The edicts already mentioned were followed by another, about the beginning of the year 1614, of which the substance was that all priests and missionaries of the Catholic faith should forthwith depart the empire, that all their houses and churches should be destroyed, and that all the Japanese converts should renounce the foreign faith. There were in Japan when this edict was issued about a hundred and thirty Jesuits, in possession of some fifty schools, colleges, and convents, or houses of residence, also some thirty friars of the three orders of St. Augustin, St. Dominic and St. Francis, besides a few secular ecclesiastics, or parish priests. Most of them were shipped off at once. Some found means to return in disguise; but the new persecution speedily assumed a character far more alarming than any of the former ones. Severe measures were now taken against the native converts. Those who refused to renounce their faith were stripped of their property, those of the most illustrious rank, among whom was Ukondono [Kōyama Ukon], being shipped off to Manila and Macao, and others sent into a frightful sort of Siberian banishment among the mountains of Northern Japan, now first described in the letters of some of the missionaries who found their way thither to console and strengthen these exiles. Many, also, were put to death, most of whom exhibited in the midst of torments all the firmness of the national character. The violence of this persecution was interrupted for a moment by an attempt on the part of Hideyori now grown to man’s estate, to recover his father’s authority—a rebellion in which many of the converts joined in hopes of gaining something by the change.