While the persecution of the Catholics was thus fiercely pursued in Japan, the Dutch, not in those islands only, but throughout the eastern seas, were zealously pushing their mercantile enterprises; and in Japan, as elsewhere, they got decidedly the advantage of the English, their companions and rivals, in these inroads upon the Portuguese and Spaniards. The English at Hirado brought junks and attempted a trade with Siam, where they already had a factory, one of their first establishments in the East; and with Cochin China and Corea; but without much advantage. In 1616, two small vessels arrived from England, one of which was employed in trading between Japan and Java. The operations of the Dutch were on a much larger scale. Not content with driving the Spaniards from the Moluccas, they threatened the Philippines, and sent to blockade Manila a fleet, which had several engagements with the Spaniards. Five great Dutch ships arrived at Hirado in 1616, of which one of nine hundred tons sailed for Bantam, fully laden with raw silk and other rich China stuffs; and another, of eight hundred tons, for the Moluccas, with money and provisions. Several others remained on the coast to watch the Spanish and Portuguese traders, and to carry on a piratical war against the Chinese junks, of which they captured, in 1616, according to Cocks’ letters, not less than twenty or thirty, pretending to be English vessels, and thus greatly damaging the English name and the chance of a trade with China.[104] On a visit to Miyako, in 1620, Cocks, as appears by his letters, saw fifty-five Japanese martyred, because they would not renounce the Christian faith; among them little children of five or six years old, burned in their mother’s arms, and crying to Jesus to receive their souls. Sixteen others had been put to death for the same cause at Nagasaki, five of whom were burned, and the rest beheaded, cut in pieces, and cast into the sea in sacks; but the priests had secretly fished up their bodies and preserved them for relics. There were many more in prison, expecting hourly to die; for, as Cocks wrote, very few turned pagans. Nagasaki had been from its foundation a Catholic city. Hitherto, notwithstanding former edicts for their destruction, one or two churches and monasteries had escaped; but, in 1621, all that were left, including the hospital of Misericordia, were destroyed. The very graves and sepulchres, so Cocks wrote, had been dug up: and, as if to root out all memory of Christianity, heathen temples were built on their sites. One of the Jesuits wrote home that there was not now any question as to the number of Jesuit residences in Japan, but only as to the number of prisons. Even those who had not yet fallen into the hands of the persecutors had only caves and holes in the rocks for their dwellings, in which they suffered more than in the darkest dungeons.