In the summer of 1616 Baernt van Neck, bailiff (baljuw) of Texel, decided to crack down on the growing number of Papists on the island. For a long time the Catholics had organised clandestine meetings, in full daylight and in defiance of placards. But the bailiff's pursuit was unfortunate. When he tried to disrupt one of their gatherings, the Papists beat up his substitute – who was incidentally his brother-in-law – until he was ‘bloody and blue’ and kicked him unceremoniously out of their meeting. Nor was this all. They threatened the bailiff himself (despite his advanced age) with rakes, and ‘the women … tried to sew [him] in a blanket’.

Such a monstrous crime could not go unpunished. Yet instead of simply summoning the malefactors before his own court, the bailiff cited them before the Gecommitteerde raden van het Noorderkwartier, a body charged with the day-to-day administration of the northern part of the province of Holland, residing in Hoorn and consisting of representatives of the seven major cities of North Holland. The defendants contested the legality of this summons and appealed to the ancient privileges of the island, granting them the right to appear before a local court. On their behalf the magistrates of Texel sent a petition to the highest court of law of the province, the Hof van Holland in The Hague, to protest against this glaring and unprecedented infringement of Texel's privileges.