Note 107 — Chapter XXIV

From Jacatra Pring proceeded to England with a cargo of pepper. It would seem that he had not forgotten his early voyages to the coast of America, for while his ship lay in the road of Saldanha, near the Cape of Good Hope, a contribution of seventy pounds eight shillings and sixpence was raised among the ship’s company to endow a school, to be called the East India School, in the colony of Virginia. Other contributions were made for this school, and the Virginia Company endowed it with a farm of a thousand acres, which they sent tenants to cultivate; but this, like the Virginia University, and many other public-spirited and promising enterprises, was ruined and annihilated by the fatal Indian massacre of 1622.

The “Royal James” carried also to England a copy in Japanese, still preserved in the archives of the East India Company, of Adams’ will. With commendable impartiality he divided his property, which, by the inventory annexed, amounted to nineteen hundred and seventy-two tael, two mas, four kandarins (two thousand four hundred and sixty-five dollars and twenty-nine cents), equally between his Japanese and his English family,—the English share to go, one half to the wife and the other half to the daughter, it not being his mind, so Cocks wrote, “his wife should have all, in regard she might marry another husband, and carry all from his child.” By the same ship Cocks made a remittance to the English family, having delivered “one hundred pounds sterling to diverse of the ‘Royal James’Company, entered into the purser’s books, to pay in England, two for one,”—a very handsome rate of exchange, which throws some light on the profits of East India trade in those days. Adams’ Japanese estate probably descended to his Japanese son; and who knows but the family survives to this day? The situation of this estate was but a very short distance from the spot where the recent American treaty was made; nor is the distance great from Shimoda, one of the ports granted by that treaty. The command of the fleet left behind, on Pring’s departure, devolved on Captain Robert Adams. According to Cocks’ account, the crews, both Dutch and English, inferior officers as well as men, were a drunken, dissolute, quarrelsome set. Rundall gives a curious record of the trial by jury and execution of an Englishman of this fleet for the murder of a Dutchman; and it seems the Dutch reciprocated by hanging a Dutchman for killing an Englishman. Master Arthur Hatch was chaplain of this fleet. Purchas gives (vol. i, part ii, book x, ch. i) a letter from him, written after his return, containing a brief sketch of his observations in Japan. Purchas also gives a letter from Cocks, which, in reference to the koku of rice, agrees very well with Titsingh’s statement quoted on page fifty-nine. Cocks represents the revenues of the Japanese princes as being estimated in mankoku of rice, each containing ten thousand koku, and each koku containing one hundred gantas (gantings), a ganta being a measure equal to three English ale pints.

Cocks states the revenue of the king of Hirado at six mankoku. He maintained four thousand soldiers, his quota for the emperor’s service being two thousand. The income of Kodzuke-no-Suke, formerly three, had lately been raised to fifteen mankoku. That of the king of Satsuma was one hundred, and that of the prince next in rank to the emperor, two hundred mankoku. The value of the mankoku was calculated at the English factory at nine thousand three hundred and seventy-five pounds, which would make the koku worth eighteen shillings and sixpence sterling, or four dollars and fifty cents, and agrees very well with Caron’s estimates of the koku, which he calls cokien, as worth ten Dutch florins, or four dollars. The estimates of Kämpfer and Titsingh, given on page fifty-nine, are higher.