[Besides father Fray Luis, father Fray Francisco de Sancta Maria, and brother Fray Bartholome Laurel, [43] his companion in the Order of St. Francis, were captured, together with their landlords and others in their house. The bitterness of the persecution increased, and the ministers of the gospels went out into the fields, ascended the mountains, and hid themselves in the caves of the earth. Father Fray Lucas del Espiritu Sancto had no food for forty days except some boiled roots. The Christians were forbidden to assemble, and were brought in scores before the ministers of Satan, to recant or suffer martyrdom. The number of the holy martyrs cannot be counted. The poor were driven out from their houses, and were compelled to suffer the rigors of winter, from which many of them died. The persecution came to be so severe that this year of 1627 was adorned with martyrs. On the sixteenth or seventeenth of August, eighteen Christians of all ages and conditions received the palm of martyrdom, among them father Fray Francisco de Sancta Maria. Among those executed were some children of three and five years of age. Details are given of the martyrdoms of a number of Japanese, with the horrible tortures which were inflicted upon them. Father Fray Luis gave the habit to some of the Japanese who were confined with him; and on July 29, 1627, the father and the nine professed, and three poor women who rejoiced that the time had come when they were to be freed from their leprosy, were executed by burning at the stake.] CHAPTER XXXII The great persecution in Japon, and the care of the province to send ministers there