Faes Dircks, and Two Others, in the Year 1570

In the year 1570, on the 7th of April, a pious follower of Christ named Faes Dircks, a chairmaker by trade, was arrested at Gouda, in Holland, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Afterwards, on the 27th of May, he was tortured very unmercifully and tyrannically by the bloodthirsty servants of antichrist, and led out under the blue sky, and on the 30th of May of the same year, put to death and burned for the genuine faith of the truth, following the footsteps of his Lord and Master Christ Jesus. Some time before this, two other pious followers of Christ were put to death at Gouda for the testimony of Jesus. One of them, according to the counsel of God, was not yet baptized upon his faith; but the God of all grace, who knows the heart, mind and thoughts of all men, accepted in him the will for the deed. So they suffered with Christ, and will be received with Him into eternal glory, at that time when all the earthly, carnal generation of men will weep and lament over themselves eternally.

Later, when Gouda was taken by the troops of the prince of Orange, there was talk of digging up the priest who had been the cause of the imprisonment and death of this Faes Dircks, and of the scattering and persecution of many of those who feared God. They afterwards changed their mind, but they hired a man for about four guilders, who took the bones of Faes Dircks down from the scaffold, and opened the grave of the priest just mentioned, who had died before this and been buried in the church of the Franciscans, near the high altar, and then laid the bones of Faes Dircks upon the body of the priest; and so they mocked this traitor, because he had thought the God-fearing unworthy to live with him in the same town, and, after their death, their bodies unworthy of burial, but they had to be given as food to the birds of heaven. But at the speedy coming of Christ from heaven this idolatrous priest will find out, when it is too late for repentance, which of them both will be acknowledged and accepted by the chief Shepherd as an acceptable sheep, or as a rejected goat.

Concerning this martyr Faes Dircks, we have obtained three examinations, namely, two without torture and one on the rack, just as they were copied out by the secretary there from the town records of Gouda, which we will therefore pass on to our fellow believers for the greater confirmation of the foregoing account; they read as follows.