It was while Iyeyasu virtually ruled Japan, and before his son Hidetada had been invested with the Shogunal authority, that a shipwrecked English mariner, Will Adams of Rotherhithe, won his way to favour by his abilities, mainly in the direction of shipbuilding, and attained to high rank in the service of the Shogunate. The East India Company, a few years later (June, 1613), established a depot at Hirado, in Spex Straits, not far from Nagasaki, where the Dutchmen had been earlier in the field. Adams learned that some of his countrymen were resident at Hirado, and journeyed thither overland at the Shogun Iyeyasu’s command to see them. He found the little colony in charge of Captain John Saris, whose diary has afforded much information concerning the mode of life of the pioneers of British trade in their remote settlement in the then little-known “Zipangu” of Portuguese navigators, and Adams himself left some few written traces of his remarkable career which have been carefully preserved, and are of the utmost value as throwing light on the manners of that period when the feudal system was in full force. On retiring nominally from the control of affairs in favour of Hidetada, in 1605, Iyeyasu had taken up his abode at Shidzuoka, then called Sumpu, and thither Adams brought Saris to have audience of the great Chieftain, by special desire. Captain Saris had been made the bearer of a letter from King James I. of England to the Emperor (Shogun) of Japan, which was delivered in due course at Shidzuoka. The English sovereign had expressed his desire that commercial relations should be established between Britain and Japan. Saris and Adams saw both Iyeyasu and Hidetada, and the project was well received. A charter was granted, in pursuance of which the English were to enjoy as much freedom of trade as the Dutchmen then in Nagasaki, the document comprising eight clauses, and constituting the first “Anglo-Japanese Agreement” of history. Unhappily the venture of the East India Company, in whose favour the charter was given, did not turn out so satisfactorily from a monetary point of view as could have been wished, and eventually the factory that had been established at Hirado, was closed, and the British withdrew, not again to seek commercial privileges until 1856. Saris placed Captain Cocks in charge of the Hirado depot and returned to London to report to the East India Company the success of his mission, and Cocks remained until the withdrawal from Hirado in 1623.