History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

disappoint the expectations of the men of the Blood
Council. With sharp reiterated knell came the
words, "Guilty: the gallows." If by a rare chance
the accused was said to be innocent, the report was
sent back to be amended: the recommendation to
death was always carried out within forty-eight
hours. This bloody harvest was gathered all over
the country, every town, village, and hamlet
furnishing its group of victims. To-day it is
Valenciennes that yields a batch of eighty-four for
the stake and the gallows; a few days thereafter, a
miscellaneous crowd, amounting to ninety-five, are
brought in from different places in Flanders, and
handed over by the Blood Council to the scaffold;
next day, forty-six of the inhabitants of Malines are
condemned to die; no sooner are they disposed of
than another crowd of thirty-five, collected from
various localities by the sleuth-hounds of the Blood
Council, are ready for the fire. Thus the horrible
work of atrocity went on, prosecuted with
unceasing rigour and a zeal that was truly awful.
Shrovetide (1568) was approaching. The
inhabitants of the Netherlands, like those of all
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