FURTHER OBSERVATION
Whether this decree by those of Groningen and Sneeck caused any serious oppression, then or about that time, by way of banishment or the like, to those baptized according to Christ's ordinance, we have not been able to learn; but that they afterwards in those places proceeded much more severely than the decree justified, by hard imprisonment, etc., against those people, we have found only too much to have been the case; however to the great good and happiness of those who suffered this for the testimony of the Lord and His holy truth. Moreover, said year did not end without the shedding of blood of the saints, and the spoiling of their goods, in the parts of Witgensteyn, as will appear from the following account. FOUR PERSONS, NAMELY, HUYBERT OP DER STRA TEN, TIJNKEN HIS WIFE, PIETER TEN HOVE, AND LIJSKEN TE LINSCHOTEN, NEAR WIT GENSTEYN LED AROUND THE GALLOWS, SCOURGED, AND BANISHED FROM THE COUNTRY, A. D. 1601 In the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and one it occurred that Johann von Steyn, Count of Witgensteyn, Lord of Hamburg, being a member of the Calvinistic Church, purposed to abolish the Romish and Lutheran doctrine, and at the same time laid his hands on the defenseless sheep of Christ, which were contemptuously called Anabaptists, and put them in prison. Among these are mentioned by name, Huybert op der Straten, Trijnken his wife, Pieter ten Hove, and Lijsken to Linschoten, which latter, as we have learned, was an aged woman of over seventy years.
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