Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan (38 page)

Read Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan Online

Authors: Giles Milton

Cocks was present when the kindling wood was lit and the flames began to lick their victims. He was amazed to note that “they would not forsake their Christian faith,” even when suffering the most terrible agony They bore their pain with a stoicism that astonished those who had gathered. The mothers stroked their children’s heads as the flames began to roar, and the children moaned softly as the pain grew too great to endure. “[They were] burned in their mothers’ armes,” wrote a despairing Cocks, “crying out, ‘Jesus receive their soules.’” Tecla was clutching her four-year-old daughter Lucy so tightly that their charred corpses—when eventually removed from the stake—were fused together. The assembled crowd had never seen such a pitiful spectacle and many wept openly. All declared that they no longer had fear of anything.
from Arnoldus Montanus’s Atlas Japannensis, 1670
.
 
Executions and burnings were publicly proclaimed on the evening before they took place (above). Local inhabitants would help to prepare all arena, and often brought stakes, faggots, and firewood
.
from Nicolas Tigault’s De christianis apud Iaponicos triumphis, 1623.
 
Public burnings always drew a large crowd in Japan, especially when the victims were Christians. Richard Cocks was surprised to note that “they would not forsake their faith,” even when suffering intense pain.
 
The public burning in Kyoto heralded a dramatic increase in the scale and intensity of the persecution. In the immediate after math, the focus of the killings switched back to Nagasaki, where the martyrdoms continued apace. “There was sixteen more martyred … ,” wrote Cocks, “whereof five were burned and the rest beheaded and cut in peeces and cast into the sea in sacks at thirty fathom deepe.” One of these was Domingo Jorge, a Portuguese trader who stood accused of sheltering two Jesuits. He was sentenced to be hacked to pieces. In spite of the widespread brutality, the executions did little to dampen public enthusiasm for Christianity. Nor did they stop the desperate clamor for relics. Even the corpses dumped at sea soon found their way back to dry land, “[for] the Christians got them up againe and keepe them secretly for relickes.”
The English were fortunate that Adams had persuaded Hidetada of their anti-Catholic credentials, for they remained untouched by the persecution. But they were still in grave danger of being murdered by their Dutch rivals and they also faced an increasingly acute financial crisis. Their warehouse contained small stocks of skins, hides, and hemp, but the men could find no buyers. They had plentiful sappanwood, but a glut meant that sales were sluggish, and the market in silk had slumped in the previous few months. No one at the factory spoke any longer of profits; all the talk was about how to generate enough income to keep them selves alive. Eaton said that they faced the stark prospect of not being
able to feed themselves over the coming winter. In a letter to London, he bemoaned their plight and added a desperate postscript : “Here are many mouthes which eat a great deale,” he wrote. “God helpe us.”
Most of these additional “mouthes” had arrived in Japan over the previous few months. The Hirado factory was still sheltering the three Englishmen whom Adams had rescued from the
Angell
, while several other mariners had been left behind by the various ships that had called at the port. The additional personnel had become a real burden for a factory already in deep crisis, for the men were often sick or wounded and therefore unable to work.
Cocks was thankful that five of the original eight founders of the factory were still alive and able to help him grow food in his vegetable garden. But in March 1620, William Nealson fell extremely sick. He had never been in good health, and his prodigious consumption of alcohol had only served to weaken his already battered constitution. After each relapse, he had convalesced at the hot springs of Iki and made a partial recovery. But on this occasion he was too ill to travel to the springs, and Cocks recorded that Nealson was “so extreame sick” that he harbored serious doubts of his recovery. He was stricken with fever and soon became too weak to raise himself from his sickbed. Cocks wrote that he was “wasted away with a consumption” and knew the end was near. At some point in March—the exact date is unknown—Nealson breathed his last. The factory had lost its most truculent and unruly member.
Nealson died intestate, but the factory members all swore that in his lifetime, “being in good and perfect memory,” he had named Cocks as his intended heir. Cocks was genuinely touched and was filled with remorse at his previous harsh words. He wrote in his diary that “if God had called me to His mercy before Mr Nealson, then … he [would have] had as much of mine.”
Nealson’s death was a blow to the morale of Cocks and his men. Although he was a drunkard and a wastrel, he was nonetheless
one of the founders of the English factory in Japan. The men were proud of the fact that they had survived against all the odds on the far side of the globe, and their confidence had grown with every year that passed. But they rapidly lost heart as their numbers diminished, wondering who would be next to fall sick or be killed. Peacock and Carwarden were long dead, murdered and drowned in Cochinchina, while Wickham had expired in Bantam. Now Nealson’s death left just four of the factory’s original team—Cocks, Adams, Eaton, and Sayers. But Adams, too, was not well. Cocks could not determine the exact nature of his illness, but it may well have been a recurrence of the sickness that had struck on his return from Cochinchina. The tropical coastline was notorious for malaria, and it is quite conceivable that this debilitating illness had returned with a vengeance. Just a few weeks earlier, Adams had been strong enough to challenge Cocks to a longboat race. Now such athleticism seemed a lifetime away. Soon after the race, the fifty-five-year-old Adams went into a catastrophic decline.
This was terrible news for Cocks and his men. Unlike Nealson, who had achieved little of note during his seven years in Japan, Adams had proved critical to the survival of the factory. At every point of crisis, the men had turned to him for help. They had relied upon him for their audiences with the shogun and had utilized his contacts within the merchant community. It was Adams who had rescued them from insolvency by sailing to Siam and who had discovered the truth about the mysterious disappearance of Peacock and Carwarden. Three of the men in the factory owed their very lives to Adams—those rescued from the Dutch prison ship—while the others had survived the regime in Japan only because of his help and advice. Now he lay sickly and wan, and the men soon realized that he was not going to recover.
So, too, did Adams himself. On May 16, 1620, he called Cocks and Eaton to his bedside to dictate his last will and testament. “I, William Adams, mariner, that have been resident in Japan the
space of some eighteen or twenty yeares, being sick of body but of a perfect remembrance—laude and praise be to Almighty God—make and ordeine this my present testament.”
His will needed careful thought, for he was a man of means. In addition to his country estate at Hemi and his town house at Edo, Adams had accumulated the considerable sum of £500. He divided the main parcel of his estate into two parts, with half going to his estranged family in England and the other half to Joseph and Susanna, his children in Japan. His third Japanese child, born of his Hirado maid, was not even mentioned.
Adams was determined that his English daughter, Deliverance, should be the principal beneficiary in England, and ordered that the first Mrs. Adams should receive no more than half the money, with the rest going to his child. “For it was not his mind [that] his wife should have all in regard she might marry another husband and carry all from his childe.”
Adams did not forget his friends in Japan. To Cocks, he bequeathed his valuable celestial globe, his sea charts, and his finest sword; Eaton was to inherit all his books and navigational equipment. His son Joseph was given his fine collection of weaponry; Osterwick and three other Englishmen were each given one of his kimonos. Although Adams had frequently been accused of being “Hollandized,” he left nothing to any of his erstwhile Dutch colleagues.
Cocks and Eaton, his principal executors, watched with great sadness as he put the finishing clause to his will. “And so hereunto I have set my hand, these whose names are hereunder being wittnesses.” It was the last thing Adams ever wrote. Shortly after setting his signature to paper, his breathing became shallow and his life slipped away. Samurai William—the first Englishman in Japan—was dead. It was the end of an era.
His place of burial remains unclear. It is likely that he was interred in the little English cemetery in Hirado, set in a shady grove of trees in the hills above the town. Yet it is just possible that
his final resting place was in Hemi, on his country estate, where his Japanese wife would eventually be interred. It was left to Richard Cocks to write Adams’s epitaph—a magnificent tribute to the man who had enabled the English to establish themselves, and survive, in the Land of the Rising Sun. “I canot but be sorrofull for the losse of such a man as Capt William Adams,” he wrote, “he, having been in such favour with two emperours of Japan as never was any Christian in these parts of the worlde.” He recorded that Adams had such a towering presence that “[he] might freely have entered and had speech with the emperours, when many Japan kings stood without and could not be permitted.”
Adams had indeed wielded enormous influence. He had also played a significant role in the expulsion of the Jesuits from Japan and had ensured that the shogun’s anti-Christian edicts did not touch Cocks and his men in Hirado. He alone had been able to guarantee their survival during their long years in Japan. Now he was dead, and he took to the grave his enormous influence at court. From this point on, Cocks’s dwindling band of Englishmen would have no one to argue their case—and fight their corner—at the court of the ruling shogun.
 
 
The death of Adams broke Cocks’s spirit. He had long realized that his time in Japan was nearing an end, and Adams’s demise was a stark reminder that he was living on borrowed time. Cocks was now in his mid-fifties and was rapidly approaching old age.
To his surprise, he discovered that he was no longer saddened by the idea of leaving Japan. In a letter to Sir Thomas Smythe—written in the spring of 1620—he confessed that he was “all-together a-weary of Japan.” His efforts to open trading links with China and Siam had singularly failed, and the factory continued to teeter on the brink of financial ruin. The constant threat of insolvency had dented Cocks’s ebullience and he was now “out of hope of any good to be done in Japan.”
He was far more troubled by the fact that he had failed to feather his nest during his seven years in Hirado. Unlike Wickham, who had devoted much of his energy to enriching himself, Cocks had only occasionally dabbled in private trade. Yet he had constantly lived beyond his means and had spent large sums of his own money on food, female entertainers, and prize goldfish. But the most constant drain on his resources was Matinga. Over the years, Cocks had bought her jewelry, silks, and satins. He had paid for her house in Hirado and given her several maids and servants. Now he learned that she had repaid his kindness by being unfaithful. He recorded that she had behaved with “villany” and “abused herself with six or seven persons.”
Cocks had long feared that news of his lavish lifestyle would lead the London merchants to conclude that he had engaged in private trade. In a letter to Sir Thomas Smythe, he insisted that he had always behaved with probity and honesty. “I came a poor man out of England,” he wrote, “[and shall] retorne a beggar home.” He also attempted to justify his parties by arguing that they had been primarily business functions: “Your worships shall never find that I have been a gamester or riatouse person.”

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