A new emperor, a minor, having succeeded in 1651, the Dutch Company sent Waganaar to congratulate him. Among other presents he brought a Casuar, a strange bird of the ostrich kind, from Banda, but the officers at Nagasaki would not suffer it to be forwarded. During this visit there happened a terrible fire at Yedo, by which two-thirds of that city were laid in ruins. Some violent disputes having arisen, and the Japanese having gone so far as to take away the rudders of the Dutch ships, Waganaar went on a second embassy to Yedo, in 1659[124]. The establishment of the French East India Company by Colbert led to some projects for a French trade with Japan, especially as Caron in some disgust had quitted the Dutch service, and enlisted into that of France. A letter from Louis XIV to the emperor of Japan, dated in 1666, was prepared, and instructions for Caron, who was to be the bearer of it; but the project does not appear to have been prosecuted[125]. [See Appendix, Note 1.] In 1673, the English East India Company made an attempt at the renewal of the trade with Japan, by despatching a ship thither. The Japanese, through the medium of the Dutch, kept themselves informed, as they still do, of the affairs of Europe; and the first question put to the new-comers was, how long since the English king (Charles II) had married a daughter of the king of Portugal. Though otherwise courteously enough received and entertained, the vessel was not allowed to sell her cargo. This refusal of intercourse the English ascribed to Dutch jealousy; but it probably was a step, as will be seen in the next chapter, to which the Japanese did not need any urging.[126] Though the Catholics of Japan were effectually cut off from all intercourse with Europe, the Catholic faith still lingered for a good while in those parts of Shimo in which it had taken the deepest root. So late as 1690, there were, according to Kämpfer, fifty persons, men, women, and children (of whom three had been arrested in 1683), imprisoned at Nagasaki for life, or until they should renounce the Catholic faith and conform to the religious usages of the country. These were peasants who knew little more of the faith which they professed except the name of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, which, indeed, according to the Dutch accounts, was all that the greater part of the Japanese converts had ever known.