Bartholomew Sastrow: Being the Memoirs of a German Burgomaster. Bartholomäus Sastrow
had the bog examined, but no body was found there. When taken to the spot, the prisoner who had confessed his guilt recognized the place of the murder, without being able, however, to point it out accurately. The landlord and his wife at Gross-Kistow, when examined carefully, denied having lodged any one at the period indicated.
Finally, a messenger of the Brandenburg March brought the news that an assassin condemned to death confessed to having killed in Pomerania a young librarian, for which crime two individuals were under lock and key at Wolgast. When taxed with having almost caused the death of innocent people by false avowals, the self-confessed murderer replied that death seemed to him preferable to the "criminal question," as that kind of torture was called. Their acquittal was pronounced on their taking the oath to bring no further action.
But this only shows the precautions to be taken before applying the instruments of torture to merely suspected men. On the other hand, it has been shown over and over again that some of the guilty hardened to that kind of thing will allow themselves to be torn to pieces sooner than avow.
In that year (1531) Duke George died in the prime of his life. His second wife was the sister to Margrave Joachim; they got rid of her for about 40,000 florins, and she subsequently married a prince of Anhalt, but finally she eloped with a falconer.
My mother having realized all her property at Greifswald, my parents really possessed a considerable fortune in sterling coin, and they called my father "the rich man of the Passen Strasse." It wanted, however, but a few years to shake his credit and to impair the happiness of his family. Without exaggeration, two women, named Lubbeke and Engeln were the principal causes of our reverses. Not content to buy on credit our cloth, which they resold to heaven knows who, they borrowed of my father, fifty, a hundred, and as much as a hundred and fifty crowns on the slightest pretext. The crown in those days was worth eight and twenty shillings of Lubeck. They promised to refund at eight and twenty and a half, and to settle for their purchases at the same rate; but if now and again they happened to make a payment on account of a hundred florins, they took care to buy at the same time goods for double the amount. My mother did not look kindly upon those two customers; she imagined that her money would be better invested at five per cent., and she spared neither warnings, prayers, nor tears to dissuade my father from trusting them. She even took Pastor Knipstrow and others into her confidence to that effect. Finally, the account came to a considerable amount, while the debtors were unable to pay as much as twenty florins. Then it transpired what had become of the cloth. The mother of one townsman, Jacob Leveling, had had 800 florins of it; the wife of another, Hermann Bruser, 1,725 florins. Hermann Bruser was a big cloth merchant who sold retail much cheaper than any of his fellow-tradesmen.
My father having taken proceedings against his two customers as well as against the woman Bruser, the latter and her husband promised to pay the 1,725 florins. Nicholas Rode, who had married Bruser's sister, and the syndic of the city, Johannes Klocke, afterwards burgomaster, induced my father to accept that arrangement, and Bruser secured conditions after having signed an acknowledgment beginning as follows: "I, together with my legitimate wife, declare to be duly and lawfully indebted to etc., etc." The syndic had drawn up this act with his own hand. He had affixed his signature to it, and his seal, and Rode had in the latter two respects done the same. But the period of the first payment coinciding with the tumult against Nicholas Smiterlow, Bruser, one of the ringleaders, thought he could have the whip hand of my father as well as of the burgomaster. On his refusal to pay, the case came before the court once more; and then, while denying his debt, in spite of the formal terms of his declaration, Bruser denounced as usurious agreements obtained by litigation. Klocke and Rode assisted him with their advice and influence; the first-named, in his capacity of a lawyer, conducted the suit, and quoting the leges et doctorum opiniones, easily convinced his non-legally educated colleagues of the council. The Westphalian Cyriacus Erckhorst, the son-in-law of Rode, and a velvet merchant, plotted on his side. There were golden florins for the all-powerful burgomaster Lorbeer, and pieces of dress-material for Mrs. Burgomaster; so that, after long arguments on both sides, Bruser was allowed to swear that he was ignorant of the affair, which, moreover, was tainted with usury. My father could not conceive that this personage would have the audacity to deny his signature, and, supported in his supposition by Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow, he did not appeal against the judgment, and at the next sitting Bruser appeared at the bar of the inner court, took the oath, and offered to comply with the second part of the order; only, in consequence of the absence of his witness he claimed a delay of a twelvemonth and a day, which was accorded to him; after which my father appealed to the council of Stralsund and afterwards to that of Lubeck.
In due time my father started for Lubeck, and took me with him. At Rostock, we lodged at the sign of The Hop, in the Market Place. My father had a considerable sum upon him to pay cash for his purchases of salt, salted cod-fish and soap, and as a measure of precaution, he carried that money in his small clothes, for Mecklenburg was infested by footpads and highwaymen. While undressing, he dropped his purse under the bed, an accident which he did not notice until next day about twelve o'clock, when we had reached Bukow. As the court was just about to open it fell to my lot to take the road back to Rostock per pedes. On that day I could get no further than Berkentin, but very early next morning I was at Rostock. Naturally, I rushed to the inn and to the room. Luckily the servants had not made the beds. I soon espied the little bag and was in time to take the coach to Wismar. My father, uneasy on my account, was already reproaching himself for having let me go.
Their worships of Lubeck condemned Bruser to keep his written promise; he then appealed to the Imperial Chamber. The suit dragged along for several years; finally, the supreme decision was to the effect that it had been well judged, but improperly thrown into appeal in the first instance, and that in the second it had been faultily judged and properly sent for appeal. The defendant was condemned to pay the costs to be determined by the judge.
And now I may be permitted to give an instance of the disloyalty of the procurators of the Imperial Chamber. Doctor Simeon Engelhardt, my father's procurator, did not hesitate to write to him that he had won his case, and asked for the bill of costs of the two previous instances, so that he might hand them to the taxing judge and apply for execution. He added that the trouble he had taken with the affair seemed to him to warrant special fees. My parents, elated with the news, promptly transmitted the bill of costs and their fees for the execution. Engelhardt produced the cedula expensarum; Bruser's procurator requested copy, not without pretending to raise objection. Engelhardt delivered the required copy, leaving to the judge the case of designating the winning party; in other words, the one who had the right to present the designatio expensarum. Well, that right was adjudged to Bruser, who drew up the cedula after ours. Engelhardt was compelled to hold his tongue and my father had to pay 164 florins.
That point having been settled, they passed to the second membrum of the Stralsund judgment; namely, whether the conditions stipulated for by my father were tainted with usury? After such an expensive and protracted lawsuit, the court, considering that Bruser had failed in his attempt to bring proof, condemned him to fulfil his engagements. Against that sentence he appealed to Lubeck. Having been non-suited there, he wished to have recourse to the Imperial Chamber, but we signified opposition to the exceptio devolutionis. According to us, he had not complied with the privilege of Lubeck. Bruser's procurator maintained the contrary. The whole of the discussion bore entirely on the sense of the word "wann" inserted in the Lubeck vidimus. Was it a conjunctio causalis, cum posteaquam, or an adverbium temporis, quando? After long-drawn debates, the appeal was rejected, and Bruser had all the costs to pay.
Then, to frustrate his adversary, he pleaded poverty on oath, although he gave to his daughter as many pearls and jewels as a burgomaster's girl could possibly pretend to. Foreseeing the upshot of the lawsuit, he had already disposed of one of his houses; after which he bestirred himself to safeguard his dwelling-house, his cellar and his various other property from being seized. Nicholas Rode, he who had signed the obligation, deposed to that effect, a document professedly anterior to my father's claim, an act constituting in his favour a general mortgage on all Bruser's property. As a matter of course, this led to a new lawsuit, which occupied respectively the courts of Stralsund and of Lubeck and the Imperial Chamber. The latter registered Rode's appeal at the moment the Protestant