Sentence of Death of Anneken Heyndricks

Whereas Anna Heyndricks daughter, alias Anna de Vlaster, formerly a citizeness of this city, at present a prisoner here, unmindful of her soul's salvation and of the obedience she owed to our mother, the holy church, and to his royal majesty, as her natural lord and prince, rejecting the ordinances of the holy church, has been neither to confession nor to the holy, worthy sacrament for six or seven years since, [but has dared] to go into the assembly of the reprobated sect of the Mennonists, or Anabaptists, and has also held conventicles or meetings at her house; and has further, about three years ago, forsaking and renouncing the baptism she received in her infancy from the holy church, been rebaptized, and then received the breaking of bread according to the manner of the Mennonist sect, and was also married to her present husband in Mennonist manner, by night, in a country house; and though she, the prisoner, has been urged and repeatedly admonished, by my lords of the court as well as by various ecclesiastical persons, to leave the aforementioned reprobated sect, she nevertheless refuses to do it, persisting in her obstinacy and stubbornness, so that she, the prisoner, according to what has been mentioned, has committed crime against divine and human majesty, as by said sect disturbing the common peace and welfare of the land, according to the import of the decrees of his majesty existing in regard to this; which misdemeanors, as an example to others, ought not to go unpunished; therefore my lords of the court, having heard the demand of my lord the bailiff, having seen the confession of the prisoner, and having had regard to her obstinacy and stubbornness, have condemned her, and do condemn her by these presents, to be executed with fire, according to the decrees of his royal majesty, and declare all her property confiscated for the benefit of his majesty aforesaid. Done in court, on the 10th of November, in the year 1571, in the presence of the judges, by the advice of all the burgomasters, to my knowledge, as secretary, and as it was signed

W. PIETERSS.

Concerning the torturing of the aforementioned

Anna Heyndricks, and when this occurred

She was tortured on the 27th of October, in the year 1571, according to the previous sentence of the judges, as appears from the record of the confession.

Thus extracted from the book of criminal sentences of the city of Amsterdam. Preserved in the archives there.

N. N.