1700
De Saa had not been long among them when the persecution fell. Men who were certain the priest was hiding money came for him one night while the fever was on him, dragged him from his bed, struck him, bound him with ropes and carried him before the Governor, who held him a while and then drove him out of the district. A fellow Jesuit, Fr Pierre Martin, came upon him months afterward still broken from it, and set down what he saw: “the traces of the beatings, and how all his teeth had been knocked out.” What brought him back was a word from a throne. Fr Laynez carried his case to Mangammal, the queen who then ruled Madurai, and she let him return to Vadakkankulam.
What this source establishes
That 1700 was not the only blow. Besse marks the point where “tradition is met with historic documents” and produces the Annual Letter of 1701, attesting a persecution in which the same priest was ill-treated in the same village. In copyright: quoted, not reproduced.
This is as much of the book as this site prints. It is named in full in the bibliography below.