How I held for two Years the Office of _Solicitator_ at the Imperial Chamber at Spires--Visit to Herr Sebastian Münster--Journey to Flanders--Character of King Philip--I leave the Prince's Service PART III CHAPTER I Arrival at Greifswald--Betrothal and Marriage--An Old Custom--I am in Peril--Martin Weyer, Bishop CHAPTER II Severe Difficulties after my Marriage--My Labours and Success as a Law-writer and Notary, and subsequently as a Procurator--An Account of some of the Cases in which I was engaged CHAPTER III The Greifswald Council appoints me the City's Secretary--Delicate Mission to Stralsund--Burgomaster Christopher Lorbeer and his Sons--Journey to Bergen--I settle at Stralsund Illustrations Charles the Fifth _frontispiece_ Martin Luther Stettin, Wittenberg, Spires The Diet of Augsburg An Execution at the time of the Reformation Ferdinand the First Melanchthon View of Stralsund INTRODUCTION If we wish to understand the pedestrian side of German life in the sixteenth century, I know of no better document than the autobiography of Bartholomew Sastrow. This hard-headed, plain-spoken Pomeranian notary cannot indeed be classed among the great and companionable writers of memoirs. Here are no genial portraits, no sweet-tempered and mellow confidings of the heart such as comfortable men and women are wont to distil in a comfortable age. The times were fierce, and passion ran high and deep. One might as well expect to extract amiability from the rough granite of an Icelandic saga. There is no delicacy, no charm, no elevation of tone in these memoirs. Everything is seen through plain glass, but seen distinctly in hard and fine outlines, and reported with an objectivity which would be consistently scientific, were it not for some quick touches of caustic humour, and the stored hatreds of an active, unpopular and struggling life. Nobody very readily sympathizes with bitter or with prosperous men, and when this old gentleman took up his pen to write, he had become both prosperous and bitter. He had always been a hard hitter, and at the age of seventy-five set himself down to compose a fighting apologia. If the ethics are those of Mr. Tulliver, senior, we must not be surprised. Is not the blood-feud one of the oldest of Teutonic institutions?