Legend took possession of these robbers from an early date, and we come across them in song and fable. Taking a foremost place were Godeke Michelson and Stortebeker, whose special mission it was to harry the traders with England. Stortebeker, it is said, was a nobleman, indeed noblemen were frequently found in the association. As a youth he had been wild and lived so riotous a life that all his property was gambled and drunk away. When finally the town of Hamburg, the scene of his carouses, in order to pay his debts, deprived him of his knightly armour and forbade him the city precincts, he joined the Victual Brothers. At this time their leader was Godeke Michelson, who hailed the new confederate with joy, after testing his strength, which was so great that with his hands he broke iron chains like string. And because his new ally was also great at drinking--he could pour down huge bumpers at one gulp--he bade him lay aside his noble name and renamed him instead Stortebeker ("Pour down bumpers"). Once when the pair had plundered the North Sea clean they made a descent upon Spain. As was their wont, they divided their spoils with their comrades, only on this occasion they kept for themselves the holy bones of St. Vincent, stolen from a church, bearing them under their coats upon their naked breasts. Hence, says legend, they grew invulnerable, so that neither crossbow nor axe, sword nor dagger, could harm or wound them. When the Victual Brothers were conquered by the Hansa and banished from the Baltic, these two chieftains with their followers found good friends in Frisia, where to this day memories of Stortebeker survive, and the chieftain Keno then Broke became his father-in-law, for his lovely daughter lost her heart to the doughty pirate, and followed him on to his ships and his floating kingdom. For Stortebeker was a king in his way. When he made captives who promised him a ransom he let them live. But if they were poor and old and weak, he threw them overboard relentlessly. If they were poor but strong, and so likely to be of use, he tested their strength in this manner. He caused his own enormous goblet to be filled with wine. If they could empty it at one gulp they were his peers, and he accepted them as comrades. Those who could not pass this ordeal were dismissed. It is said that Stortebeker and Godeke Michelson sometimes had moments of penitence concerning the lives they led. In such a moment of remorse they each presented the cathedral of Verdun with seven glass windows, on which were painted cunningly the seven deadly sins. Stortebeker's "mark," two reversed goblets, is depicted in one of them, probably the one that treats of gluttony. They also founded a charity for distributing bread to the poor.