Jan van Paris, Pieter van Cleves, Hendrick Maelschalck, and Lauwerens Pieters, in the Year 1568

Jan van Paris, Pieter van Cleves, Hendrick Maelschalck, and Lauwerens Pieters had not yet united with the church, but were novices and ready to unite; so, as they were going to hear the Word of God preached, they were arrested at Ghent, in Flanders, in the year 1568, and taken to the Count's Castle. After boldly confessing the faith and steadfastly holding to it, they were sentenced in Passion Week to be strangled and burned. But when they had gone up onto the scaffold, the Spanish Provost (there were at that time nineteen companies of Spanish soldiers in Ghent), seeing that the intention was to strangle them, forced the executioner to fetch other equipment. So the executioner spoke to the commander in chief, who ordered him, contrary to the sentence that had been pronounced, to burn them alive. The provost also severely kicked and beat the brothers.

In the meantime the executioner fetched a basketful of chains. When the brothers heard that they were to be burned alive, they raised their voices and sang: "I call upon You, O heavenly Father." Then the Spaniards beat them so dreadfully with sticks that the eye of one of them fell out onto his cheek. And so they were burned alive, the Spaniards shouting loudly and throwing sticks into the fire at a rapid rate, as though they wanted a part in this madness, as though they thought they were doing God a service by it.