In the year 1862 he had purchased the steamer _Fiery Cross_ for his nephew, and went for a trial trip in her, outside Yokohama, and he had otherwise evinced his perfect readiness to avail himself of such novel methods and appliances, and of the services of Europeans in general, as were from time to time offered to the local authorities of Satsuma as a distinctly progressive body. It is requisite that the real attitude of the Satsuma chieftain towards strangers should be made clear, because it was owing to the precipitate action of some of his followers, in attacking a party of Yokohama residents on the highway, for no better reason than that they did not at once alight from their horses and stand at the edge of the roadway while the Daimio’s procession passed on its way back to Satsuma, that the British squadron was ordered to bombard Kagoshima in 1863. The murder of Mr Richardson near Tsurumi was perpetrated, in fact, when the Satsuma chief was returning after escorting to Yedo a high official whom the Emperor Komei had sent in the spring of 1862 to announce to the Bakufu his determination to expel all foreigners from Japan. This was the period when reactionary influences at Kioto were strongest, and even the Shogun Iyemochi, to whom Prince Tokugawa Keiki was at the time the appointed guardian, could do no other than promise obedience to the Imperial mandate. The Emperor Komei’s orders had been to the effect that Iyemochi must at once visit Kioto and there confer with the Court nobles, the avowed intention being that the Shogun should put forth all his strength, in concert with the clans throughout the empire, and restore tranquillity by effecting the complete expulsion of “the barbarians.” So long as the Court influence remained inimical to foreigners it was almost inevitable that there should be a vast percentage of the population averse to the treaties, to the Shogunate which had entered into those treaties, and to everything that was to be regarded as an alien intrusion. Shimadzu Saburo’s relations with the Bakufu were obviously of a nature to preclude the possibility of its calling him to account for the crime perpetrated at Tsurumi, and the British Admiral therefore undertook the duty, with the result that the Kagoshima batteries were silenced and three of Satsuma’s recently purchased steamers were captured. But as so frequently happens after a quarrel, the foes were better friends than ever within a year or two, and on the 27th of July 1866 Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister, paid Kagoshima a visit at its lord’s special invitation, in the man-of-war _Princess Royal_, accompanied by the _Serpent_ and _Salamis_, and received a most enthusiastic welcome. The young Prince, nephew of Shimadzu Saburo, came off in his state barge, and the British visitors were taken to see the foundry, where cannon were being cast, and shot and shell turned out in great quantities, almost within a stone’s throw of the walls of the daimio’s palace.