Joost van der Straten, born at Teems in the district of Waes, in Flanders, a chairmaker by trade, was, when he was about seventy years old, taken from his work, and apprehended with his whole household, outside of Antwerp, on the Kiel (where now the fort stands), and they were, by the Spaniards, who apprehended them, brought to Antwerp. His wife and daughter, however, belonging to no religion; were released in course of time; but upon Joost many tortures were inflicted, in order to make him apostatize. But as he remained steadfast, after an imprisonment of three days, on Shrove Tuesday, A. D. 1571, his mouth was screwed open, and he was thus burnt alive in the market place, before the city hall, and then suspended from a stake in the gallows-field. The Duke of Alva was in Antwerp at that time.
Shortly after Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1571, the Duke of Alva removed from Antwerp to Brussels, taking with him all the prisoners, those of the reformed as well as those of the Anabaptistic religion, among which prisoners there were also this Hans van der Straten, aged about thirty-one years, born at Kortrijck, and his wife Tanneken, aged past seventeen years, born at Mechlin. As Hans firmly adhered to his faith and the divine truth, he was sentenced to death, and conducted outside of Brussels with his mouth screwed open, and there burnt alive to ashes, about the middle of Lent, in the year 1571. But his wife, to whom he had been married only six weeks, and who was still very young, finally, through many vexations and tortures, apostatized from her faith, and was put into a convent at Breda, from whence, at a favorable opportunity, she escaped, and went to Danswijck, where she, after having fully repented of her apostasy, again united with the church, and thereafter always led a pious life until her godly death.