emboldened, and in despite of that solemnity more enkendeled, the
20 of August being Tuesday toward evening, at the Antemne
[anthem] time betwene 5 and 6 of the clock, began first by certain
boyes to play their Pageant, mocking and striking by way of
derision, the Image of our Lady then especially visited and honored
for the honorable memorial of her glorious Assumption. At this light
behaviour the boies some stirre being made, as wel by the Catholiks
then in the Church, as by the faction of the Calvinists there also then
assembled, the Catholikes fearing a greater inconvenience, began to
depart the Churche, and the brethren at the rumour therof incresed
very much.With this the Margrave arrived and ordered the Protestants to disperse,
but this they were quite unwilling to do. Failing of this, the Margrave
ordered them not to disrupt divine service, to which they answered, ‘thei
came also to do God service, and to sing a few Psalmes in his honor, that
being a place most convenient therfore’. But by this time the crowd had
grown so large that the Margrave could achieve nothing and left.
The Magistrate being thus rejected the holy brotherhode went to
their druggery. First they song Psalmes, pretending that only to be
the cause of their meeting there at that time. At their Psalmodies
rushed in great numbers of people, some to see and be gone againe,
some to remaine and accompanie them .... From that time forward,
their melodie sone ended, they proceeded to sacrilege, to breaking of
Images, to throwing downe of Aulters, of Organes, and of all kind
of Tabernacles, as well in that Churche, as in all other Churches
Monasteries and Chappelles of Antwerpe, to stealing of Chalices, so
spoiling of Copes, to breaking uppe of seates, to robbing of the
Churche Wardens boxes as well for the church as for the poore.Stapleton ends his account of the evening’s activities with a synopsis of
the more moderate spoilation of St James church, the rapine being ‘not
so outragiouse, as in other churches’. There ‘were divers little scobbes
and boxes of gatherings for the poore. These scobbes lo, onlye, were
broken up, and the contents visited: for to them was their chiefe
devotion: Al the reste remained whole’. Finally:
To be shorte, al that night ... the Zelous brotherhood so folowed the
chase, that they lefte not one Churche in Antwerpe greate or smal,
where they hunted not up good game .... Chalices, patens and
cruets of golde and of siver, copes and vestiments of silke and velvet,
fine linnen and course, none came amisse: they tooke al in good
parte and tooke no more than they founde. What shal I speak of the
very libraries spoiled and burned, namely of the grey fryers, and of
the Abbye of S. Michael? To describe particularly the horrible and
outrageous sacrileges of that night, an eternal document of the
ghospelike zele. of this sacred brotherhood, woulde require a ful
treatise of it selfe.^7120 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^7) Stapleton,A Counterblaste, ff. 17b–19a.
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