AVING issued his persecuting placards, Charles V., as we have seen in the Introduction, was not long in finding victims on whom to execute them; and among the first who fell a sacrifice in the Netherlands, on account of their steadfastness to the reformed principles, after these placards were issued, was WENDELMUTA KLAAS, a widow of Monickendam, in North Holland.

Her reformed sentiments becoming known, she was apprehended in the year 1527, and imprisoned in the castle of Woerden. On the 15th of November that year she was conducted from that castle to the Hague. On the 18th she was brought before Count Van Hoogstraten, stadtholder of Holland, and the great council, by whom she was closely examined. Transubstantiation, prayers to saints, auricular confession, and other Popish doctrines supplied ample materials for questions; to all which she gave ready and judicious answers. The following is a specimen of the interrogatories put to her, and of the answers she returned :

Council. "If you are not free in answering us, and unless you renounce your errors, a dreadful death awaits you."

Wendelmuta." If the power is given you from above, I am prepared to suffer."

Coun. "You do not fear death because you have not tasted it." Wend. "That is true, neither shall I ever taste it, for Christ hath said, 'If any man keep my sayings, he shall never see death.'” Coun "What is your belief as to the sacrament of the mass?" Wend. "I believe it to be nothing but a piece of dough; and whereas you hold it to be a God, I say that it is your devil." Coun.-"What do you think as to the saints, their pictures and images?"

Wend. "I know no other mediator than Jesus Christ."
Coun. "You must die if you hold to this.

confessor or not?"

Will you have a

Wend. "I have confessed all my sins to Christ, my Lord, who taketh away all sins; but if I have offended any one, I heartily ask of him forgiveness.”

Coun. "Who has taught you this opinion? and how have you come by it?"

Wend.- --" The Lord, who calls all men to him: I am one of his sheep, therefore I hear his voice."

Coun." Are you alone then called?"

Wend."Oh no! for the Lord calls to him all that are heavy

laden."

After many other questions of a similar kind were put to her, to which she gave corresponding answers, she was led back to her prison. On the two following days, the last of which was the day of her execution, many persons-monks, priests, women, and her nearest relatives came to visit her, with the view of inducing her to save her life by abandoning her faith; but she resisted all their entreaties, refusing to purchase life on such dishonourable terms. Among her visitors was a noble matron, who, in condoling with her, advised her, as the line of policy best befitting the times, to keep her opinions to herself: "Dear mother, can you not think as you please, and be silent; so that you should not die?" "Ah!"

said this magnanimous martyr, "you know not what you say. It is written, 'With the heart we believe to righteousness, with the tongue we confess to salvation.' I cannot be silent, dear sister. I cannot be silent; I am commanded and constrained to speak out by Him who hath said, 'Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven'" (Matt. x. 33). "I am afraid, then," rejoined the lady, "that they will put you to death." "Whether, to-morrow, they burn me or put me into a sack and drown me," replied Wendelmuta, "that to me is a matter of indifference. If such be the Lord's appointment, it must come to pass; not otherwise. It is my purpose to cleave to the Lord."

Two Dominican friars, the one as father confessor, the other as an

instructor, came also to her cell, to persuade her, if possible, to relinquish her heretical opinions, and obtain absolution. These men, it is evident, were grossly ignorant, unable to say anything in vindi

cation of their church, and they did not even attempt to enter the lists in argument with her. The last-mentioned friar, placing a crucifix before her, said, "See, here is the Lord your God." "That is not my God," she calmly but boldly answered. "It is another cross by which I am redeemed. That is a wooden god; throw him into the fire, and warm yourselves by him." The other friar asked whether on the morning of her death she would receive the sacra ment of the mass, which he would readily administer to her. She rejected the proferred service, demanding, "What God would you give me; one that is perishable, that is bought for a farthing?" And the priest having expressed to her the joy he felt in having that day celebrated mass, she told him that he had crucified the Son of God afresh. "Methinks you are beside yourself,” said the friar uncourteously, and then he put to her the question, “What do you think of the holy unction?" "Oil is good in a salad, or to smear your shoes with," was her reply. Thus fruitless were the attempts made to bring her to retract her sentiments. She dreaded acting contrary to her convictions of truth and duty more than agony of body and death.

On the 20th of November, the last day of her life, she was brought into court for trial. While she was entering the hall, the monk formerly sent to her prison to instruct her, advanced towards her, and holding forth a crucifix, called upon her to recant, before the sentence should be pronounced. Turning away from the crucifix, she said, "I cleave to my Lord and my God. Neither death nor

The trial proceeded. To convict

life shall separate me from him." her of heresy a shorter process than the examination of witnesses was deemed sufficient. A few questions were put to her, and these, in the estimation of her judges, being unsatisfactorily answered, the Dean of Maeldwyk, sub-commissary and inquisitor, read her sentence in Latin from a paper, and then repeated it in Dutch, pronouncing her guilty of holding a false faith respecting the sacrament of the altar, and of obstinately continuing in the same, and delivering her over to the secular arm, or to the civil authorities, beseeching

them to treat her with clemency, not to break a bone of her body, nor to shed her blood. "This the inquisitors did," says Dr. M'Crie, "to escape falling under the censure of irregularity, which the canons of the church had denounced against ecclesiasties who should be accessory to the inflicting of any bodily injury. Yet they not only knew what would be the consequence of this act, but had taken all the precautions necessary for securing it." Having pronounced this sentence, the dean, with two other ecclesiastics, who had sat with him on the bench, withdrew from the council. The chancellor, then, upon the ground that she was an obstinate heretic, condemned her to be burned at the stake, and declared all her goods to be confiscated. On hearing her doom, she thus addressed the judges, “If your proceedings are now closed, I pray all of you to forgive me if I have injured or provoked any of you." This at least is an evidence of the peaceful inoffensive spirit of this woman. Wherein she had wronged them it is not easy to see. Instead of asking forgiveness for any injury which she had done to them, she had rather a right to complain of the injustice and inhumanity of their treatment of her. The monk who had been so assiduous in his efforts for her conversion redoubled them after her condemnation, but with as little success as before.

She was immediately conducted from the council hall to the place of execution, to undergo the fatal sentence. While she was leaving the hall, the monk exhorted her to call upon our dear lady," the Virgin Mary, to pray for her. "Our lady," said she, "is happy in repose with God." "Call upon her," repeated the monk eagerly. "We have Christ," rejoined Wendelmuta," who sits at the right hand of the Father, he intercedes for us." As she approached the scaffold, the monk, holding the crucifix before her, as he had frequently done before, importuned her, but again in vain, to look once on her Lord who died for her. "Do you not fear the ordeal you must suffer in the fire?" he demanded. "I do not," she answered, "for I know how I stand with my God."

1 History of the Reformation in Spain, p. 278.