The persecution began in its worst form about 1616. This was the year in which Ieyasu died, but his son and successor carried out the terrible programme with heartless thoroughness. It has never been surpassed for cruelty and brutality on the part of the persecutors, or for courage and constancy on the part of those who suffered. The letters of the Jesuit fathers are full of descriptions of the shocking trials to which the Christians were subjected. The tortures inflicted are almost beyond belief. Mr. Gubbins, in the paper(212) to which reference has already been made, says: “We read of Christians being executed in a barbarous manner in sight of each other, of their being hurled from the tops of precipices, of their being buried alive, of their being torn asunder by oxen, of their being tied up in rice-bags, which were heaped up together, and of the pile thus formed being set on fire. Others were tortured before death by the insertion of sharp spikes under the nails of their hands and feet, while some poor wretches by a refinement of horrid cruelty were shut up in cages and there left to starve with food before their eyes. Let it not be supposed that we have drawn on the Jesuit accounts solely for this information. An examination of the Japanese records will show that the case is not overstated.”(213) The region around Nagasaki was most fully impregnated with the new doctrine, and it was here that the persecution was by far the most severe. This was now an imperial city, governed directly by officers from the government of Yedo. The governor is called Kanwaytsdo by Warenius, relying on Caron and Guysbert, but I have been unable to identify him by his true Japanese name. Beginning from 1616 there was a continuous succession of persecutions. In 1622 one hundred and thirty men, women, and children were put to death, among whom were two Spanish priests, and Spinola an Italian. The next year one hundred more were put to death. The heroism of these martyrs awakened the greatest enthusiasm among the Christians. In the darkness of the night following the execution many of them crept to the place where their friends had been burnt and tenderly plucked some charred fragments of their bodies, which they carried away and cherished as precious relics. To prevent the recurrence of such practices the officers directed that the bodies of those burnt should be completely consumed and the ashes thrown into the sea. Guysbert in his account mentions that among those executed at Hirado was a man who had been in the employ of the Dutch factory and his wife. They had two little boys whom the factor offered to take and have brought up by the Dutch. But the parents declined, saying that they preferred to have the boys die with them. A plan was devised by which the heads of households were required to certify that none of their families were Christians, and that no priests or converts were harbored by them.