Andries Langedul, Mattheus Pottebacker, and Lauwerens van der Leyen, in the Year 1559

At Antwerp three brothers, named Andries Langedul, Mattheus Pottebacker and Lauwerens van der Leyen, were arrested for the truth. Andries Langedul was arrested at a time when a meeting had just been held in his house for the preaching of the Word of God. Someone had spied it out, and so the margrave came there just after the congregation had scattered, while Andries was sitting on his porch, reading the Bible. He arrested him on the spot.

His wife was in childbed at the time, which the margrave discovered when he walked toward the chamber and saw that the midwife had the child on her lap; for the woman had just given birth. Seeing this, the margrave withdrew from the chamber, but he also arrested the women who had come to help her in her distress, and had the woman in childbed guarded by some of his servants. But the nurse, angered at this, kept the woman from being arrested, by entertaining them very freely and plying them with wine, so that the sick woman was, without their knowledge, carried on planks across a well belonging to the two neighbors in common, and so went from her neighbor's house to the house of Christian Langedul, her husband's brother, whose wife was also in childbed at that time.

We have not learned on what particular day Andries Langedul was arrested, but he offered up his sacrifice with Mattheus Pottebacker and Lauwerens van der Leyen on Thursday, November the 9th, in the year 1559, and this not publicly, but they were beheaded in prison, in a place where the other prisoners, of whom there were many at that time, could see it from the windows of their cells.

When Andries knelt down to submit to the sword, he folded his hands, saying: "Father, into Your hands I commend" but: "I commend my spirit" was not finished, since the swift descent of the sword prevented it. In this way all three were put to death as lambs of Christ for the slaughter.

Lauwerens van der Leyen wrote several letters in prison, the following of which have come into our hands.