So far as is known, the earliest Anabaptist martyrs were Jan Walen and two others belonging to Waterlandt. They were done to death in a peculiarly atrocious way at The Hague in 1527. Instead of being burnt alive, they were chained to a stake at some distance from a huge fire, and were slowly roasted to death. This frightful punishment seems to have been reserved for the Anabaptist martyrs. It was repeated at Haarlem in 1532, when a woman was drowned and her husband with two others was roasted alive. Some time in 1530, Jan Volkertz founded an Anabaptist congregation in Amsterdam which became so large as to attract the attention of the authorities. The head of the police (_schout_) in the city was ordered to apprehend them. Volkertz delivered himself up voluntarily. The greater part of the accused received timely warning from the _schout's_ wife. Nine were taken by night in their beds. These with their pastor were carried to The Hague and beheaded by express order of the Emperor. He also commanded that their heads should be sent to Amsterdam, where they were set on poles in a circle, the head of Volkertz being in the centre. This ghastly spectacle was so placed that it could be seen from the ships entering and leaving the harbour. All these martyrs, and many others whose deaths are duly recorded, were followers of Melchior Hoffman. Hoffman's views were those of the "Brethren" of the later Middle Ages, the _Old Evangelicals_ as they were called. In a paper of directions sent to Emden to assist in the organisation of an Anabaptist congregation there, he says: "God's community knows no head but Christ. No other can be endured, for it is a brother- and sisterhood. The teachers have none who rule them spiritually but Christ. Teachers and ministers are not lords. The pastors have no authority except to preach God's Word and punish sins. A bishop must be elected out of his community. Where a pastor has thus been taken, and the guidance committed to him and to his deacon, a community should provide properly for those who help to build the Lord's house. When teachers are thus found, there is no fear that the communities will suffer spiritual hunger. A true preacher would willingly see the whole community prophesy." But the persecution, with its peculiar atrocities, had been acting in its usual way on the Anabaptists of the Netherlands. They had been tortured on the rack, scourged, imprisoned in dungeons, roasted to death before slow fires, and had seen their women drowned, buried alive, pressed into coffins too small for their bodies till their ribs were broken, others stamped into them by the feet of the executioners. It is to be wondered at that those who stood firm sometimes gave way to hysterical excesses; that their leaders began to preach another creed than that of passive resistance; that wild apocalyptic visions were reported and believed?