On entering Soest, Dusentscheuer and his fellow-apostles opened their mission by a public frenzied appeal to repentance. Then, hearing that the senate had assembled, they entered the hall and preached to the city councillors in so noisy a fashion that the magistrates were obliged to suspend their deliberations. The burgomaster having asked them who they were, and why they entered the town-hall unsummoned and unannounced, "We are sent by the king of the New Zion, and by order of God to preach the Gospel," was the reply of Dusentscheuer; "and to execute this mission we need neither passports nor permission. The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by storm." "Very well," said the burgomaster collectedly. "Guards, remove the preachers and throw them into prison." A few days after several of them lost their heads on the block. John Clopris, at the head of four evangelists, entered Warendorf. They took up their abode in the house of an Anabaptist named Erpo, one of the magistrates of the town, and began to preach and prophesy in the streets. The first day they rebaptised fifty persons. Clopris preached with such fervour and persuasive eloquence, that the whole town followed him; the senate received the sign of the covenant in a body, and this was followed by a rebaptism of half the population. Alarmed at what was taking place, and afraid of a diversion in his rear, Francis of Waldeck wrote to the magistrates ordering them to give up the apostles of error. They refused, and the prince at once invested the town and bombarded it. The magistrates sent offers of capitulation, which the prince rejected; they asked to retain their arms and their franchises. Francis of Waldeck insisted on unconditional surrender, and they were constrained to yield. Some of the senators and citizens who had repented of their craze, or who had taken no part in the movement, seized the apostles and conducted them to the town-hall. Clopris and his fellows cast down their florins of gold and declared that they shook off the dust of their feet against the traitors, and that they would carry the pure Word of God and the living Gospel elsewhere; but escape was not permitted, and they were delivered over to the prince-bishop. Francis of Waldeck at once placed sentinels in the streets, ordered every citizen to deliver up his weapons, took the title-deeds of the city, withdrew its franchises, and executed four of the apostles and three of the ringleaders of the senators. Clopris was sent to Cologne, and was burnt there on the 1st February, 1535, by the Elector. The bishop then raised a fortress to command the town, and placed in it a garrison to keep the Warendorfians in order. Seventeen years after, the greater part of the franchises were restored, and all the rest in 1555. The apostles of the east, under Julius Frisius, were arrested at Coesfeld, and were executed.[223]