Joost van der Straten, in the Year 1571

Joost van der Straten, born at Teems in the district of Waes, in Flanders, a chairmaker by trade, was taken from his work when he was about seventy years old, and arrested with his whole household outside Antwerp, on the Kiel (where the fort now stands), and the Spaniards who arrested them brought them to Antwerp. His wife and daughter, however, belonging to no religion, were released in the course of time; but many tortures were inflicted on Joost, in order to make him apostatize. But since he remained steadfast, after an imprisonment of three days, on Shrove Tuesday in the year 1571, his mouth was screwed open, and he was burned alive in this way in the marketplace, in front of the city hall, and then hung from a stake in the gallows field. The Duke of Alva was in Antwerp at that time.