Extract of the Sentence of Maerten Janss, Corn Porter, Citizen of This City

Whereas Maerten Janss, corn porter, citizen of the city of Delft, and Jan Hendrickss of Swartewael, steersman, prisoners, have confessed, without torture and iron bonds, that they belong to the evil and condemned sect of the Anabaptists, and have therefore attended various forbidden and improper meetings; and also confess that they have been rebaptized, and have withheld the holy sacrament of baptism from some of their infants; that they also hold very evil views concerning the mass, despising and utterly rejecting the holy sacrament of the altar, as also all other sacraments, services and ceremonies of the holy Roman Catholic Church, and, what is worse still, persist in and obstinately adhere to their aforesaid damned and condemned heresy, without repenting in any way, or being willing to abandon it, in spite of all the good admonitions frequently and at various times addressed to them by various good spiritual Catholic persons; all of which are most enormous, wicked and scandalous matters, which for an example to others ought not to go unpunished; therefore the judges of the city of Delft, according to the import of the decrees issued by his royal majesty, have ordered, and do hereby order, that the aforesaid Maerten Janss and Jan Hendrickss, prisoners, be led upon the scaffold erected in the marketplace of this city, and there be tied to a stake and burned until death follows, and that their dead bodies then be brought to the Gallows Hill and there placed at stakes. We furthermore declare all their property confiscated and forfeited for the benefit of his royal majesty. We further condemn the aforesaid prisoners to the costs of their imprisonment and the expenses of the execution. Done the fifth of February, in the year 1572, Delft Style.

NOTE. The original date appears to be the year 1570, two years earlier; but this is an error, as is clear from various circumstances that follow, and also from the date of the letters that Jan Hendrickss wrote in prison.

Extracted from the first book of criminal sentences, folio 195, preserved in the archives of the city of Delft, the 23rd of August, in the year 1659.

Secretary of Delft.