This news awakened hopes for Enzinas on the part of his kinsmen at Antwerp, and the most influential among them immediately set out to solicit the release of the young man. They appealed to the confessor, who was ready enough to make promises, to the chancellor Granvella, to his son the bishop of Arras, afterwards archbishop of Mechlin and cardinal, and to Claude Boissot, dean of Poligny, master of requests. They all gave kind answers, but these were words and nothing else. The queen of France visited Brussels, and a report was spread that all prisoners would at her request be liberated. Some murderers, brigands, and other malefactors were, indeed, set free; the first of them was a parricide; but Enzinas and the other evangelicals were more strictly and severely kept than before.[153] At the same time, the emperor having gone to Ghent, the monks extorted from him some laws _written in blood_, which were promulgated in all the towns, and which enabled them cruelly to assail the Lutherans at their own pleasure.[154] 'On a sudden there broke out in Flanders a bloody persecution, a slaughter of Christian people, such as had never been seen or heard of.' From all the towns, not excepting even the smallest, a great number of people and of leading men, on being warned of the danger which was impending over them, took flight, leaving their wives, their children, their families, houses, and goods, which were forthwith seized by the agents of the emperor. But there was a large number who could not fly. All the towers were filled. The prisons in the towns had not room to hold the victims. They brought in two hundred prisoners at a time, both men and women. Some of them were thrust into sacks and thrown into the water; others were burned, beheaded, buried alive, or condemned to imprisonment for life. The like storm swept over Brabant, Hainault, and Artois. The unhappy witnesses of this butchery asserted that 'for many ages so many and great cruelties had not been perpetrated, nor seen, nor heard of in all the world.' Such was the joyful entry which Charles the Fifth made into his good country of Flanders and the good town of Ghent, in which he was born. Tidings of these things were brought day by day into the prison at Brussels, frequently with a large number of captives. When Enzinas and his friends heard of the slaughter they were amazed and terrified. Will there be any end to this? they asked. It might well be doubted whether such men would ever be satiated with the blood of their fellow-men! Enzinas began to regret that, from confidence in his own innocence, and for fear of bringing the jailer into disgrace, he had not availed himself of several opportunities which had offered of making his escape from prison. A circumstance which soon occurred helped to bring him to a decision.