In the meantime both the English and Dutch had appeared on the scene, as will be more fully detailed in the next chapter. Their object was solely trade, and as the Portuguese monopoly hitherto had been mainly secured by the Jesuit fathers, it was natural for the new-comers to represent the motive of these fathers in an unfavorable and suspicious light. “Indeed,” as Hildreth(206) says, “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.”(207) Whether it is true as charged that the minds of the Japanese rulers had been poisoned against the Jesuit fathers by misrepresentation and falsehood, it may be impossible to determine definitely; but it is fair to infer that the cruel and intolerant policy of the Spanish and Portuguese would be fully set forth and the danger to the Japanese empire from the machinations of the foreign religious teachers held up in the worst light. During the latter years of Ieyasu’s life, after he had settled the affairs of the empire and put the shōgunate upon a permanent basis, we see growing evidence of his prejudice against Christianity. That he had such prejudice in a very pronounced form is clear from his reference to the “false and corrupt school” in chapter xxxi. of the _Legacy_. And he had inherited from Taikō Sama the conviction that the spread of this foreign faith was a menace to the peace of the empire. The instructions(208) which were issued to the members of the Society of Jesus, however, forbade any father to meddle in secular affairs or to interfere in any way with the political concerns of the government in which they were laboring. That there were occasional instances of the disregard of this regulation by the enthusiastic members of the order may be supposed, but it will be unjust and unfounded to attribute to this society a settled policy of interference in the affairs of the nations where they were employed as missionaries.