Note 100 — Chapter XXII
Reading edition
Captain Saris’ account of his voyage and travels in Japan (which agrees remarkably with the contemporaneous observations of Don Rodrigo, and with the subsequent ones of Kämpfer and others), may be found in Purchas, “His Pilgrimes,” part i, book iv, chap. i, sect. 4-8. Cocks’ not less curious observations may be found in chap. iii, sect. 1-3, of the same book and part. There is also a readable summary of what was then known of Japan, in Purchas, “His Pilgrimage,” book v, chap. xv.
Rundall, in his “Memorials of the Empire of Japan,” printed by the Hackluyt Society, 1850, has republished Adams’ first letter, from two MSS. in the archives of the East India Company; but the variations from the text, as given by Purchas, are hardly as important as he represents. He gives also from the same records four other letters from Adams, not before printed. It seems from these letters, and from certain memoranda of Cocks, that there were three reasons why Adams did not return with Saris, notwithstanding the emperor’s free consent to his doing so. Besides his wife and daughter in England, he had also a wife, son, and daughter in Japan. Though he had the estate mentioned as given him by the emperor (called Hemmi, about eight miles from Uraga), on which were near a hundred households, his vassals, over whom he had power of life and death, yet he had little money, and did not like to go home with an empty purse. He had quarrelled with Saris, who had attempted to drive a hard bargain with him. The East India Company had advanced twenty pounds to his wife in England. Saris wanted him to serve the company for that sum and such additional pay as they might see fit to give. But Adams, whom the Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese, were all anxious to engage in their service, insisted upon a stipulated hire. He asked twelve pounds a month, but consented to take a hundred pounds a year, to be paid at the end of two years.
See “History of the English Factory at Hirado,” in vol. xxvi. of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, and “Diary of Richard Cocks,” edited by Mr. N. Murakami, and published in Tōkyō in 1899.—Edr.