A very bitter state of feeling from the first therefore manifested itself between the Jesuits and Franciscans. The latter claimed that the opposition they met with was due to the plots and intrigues of the Jesuits, and they openly avowed that the Jesuit fathers through cowardice failed to exert themselves in the fulfilment of their religious duties, and in a craven spirit submitted to restrictions on their liberty to preach. Hideyoshi’s suspicion was aroused against the foreigners about this time, A.D. 1587, by the gossip of a Portuguese sea-captain which had been reported to him. This report represented the captain as saying: “The king, my master, begins by sending priests who win over the people; and when this is done he despatches his troops to join the native Christians, and the conquest is easy and complete.”(172) This plan seemed so exactly to agree with experiences in China, India, and the East Indies, that Hideyoshi resolved to make it impossible in Japan. He therefore issued an edict in the year A.D. 1587 commanding all foreign religious teachers on pain of death to depart from Japan in twenty days. This edict, however, gave leave to Portuguese merchants “to traffic and reside in our ports till further order; but withal we do hereby strictly forbid them, on pain of having both their ships and merchandises confiscated, to bring over with them any foreign religious.”(173) In consequence of this edict, in A.D. 1593 six Franciscans and three Jesuits were arrested in Ōsaka and Kyōto and taken to Nagasaki, and there burnt. This was the first case of the execution of Christians by the order of the government. To explain the transportation of these missionaries to Nagasaki and their execution there, it should be stated that in A.D. 1586, at the close of the Satsuma campaign, Nagasaki had been taken from the prince of Ōmura and made a government city, to be controlled by a governor appointed immediately from Kyōto. Shortly after this, in A.D. 1590, on account of its superior harbor, it was fixed upon as the only port at which foreign vessels would be admitted.