Dirk Willems was imprisoned in a castle tower in Asperen, a small town in the modern-day province of Gelderland, Netherlands. His crime was not theft, violence, or treason. Willems was an Anabaptist, a member of a radical Reformation movement that rejected infant baptism in favor of adult believer baptism and preached strict Christian pacifism. To the Spanish Catholic authorities who controlled the Low Countries under King Philip II, this theological stance was treated as capital heresy.
Confinement in the tower was harsh, yet Willems engineered a classic prison escape. Using strips of knotted bed linens, he lowered himself out of a high window onto the frozen grounds surrounding the castle. Weighing less than average due to prolonged prison rations, he slipped quietly onto the thin ice of the Hondegat, a frozen body of water near the castle walls. His footsteps were light enough to skate across the treacherous surface without breaking the frozen crust.
A guard spotted the escape and sounded the alarm. A burly bailiff (or deputy) launched an immediate pursuit, determined to recapture the fugitive before he vanished into the surrounding Dutch countryside. That weight differential quickly proved decisive.
