In spring 1566, the life of Margrita de Lannoy was about to be turned upside down. She and her husband Markus were members of the new underground Calvinist church in the great Netherlandish trade city of Antwerp. Like other coreligionists, the couple lived a precarious existence under Catholic Habsburg rule, worshipping in secret for fear of prosecution under the anti-heresy laws. In April 1566, a challenge to these laws presented to the court in Brussels by over 200 noblemen forced the government to make concessions. While the leniency granted to religious dissenters was only temporary, it was dramatic. Starting in May, ministers came out of hiding and preached to crowds of thousands all over the Low Countries. By August, enthusiasm for the new religion encouraged many Reformed activists to attack Catholic imagery and begin stripping churches in preparation for a new religious transformation. Within the year, however, the government regained order and tens of thousands of Protestant dissenters, facing harsh punishments for their rebellion, fled the Netherlands to sanctuaries in Germany and England. By 1567 Markus had died, while Margrita fled with her children to Wesel, a German city near the Dutch border that became packed with refugees. She later remarried, to the Brabantine merchant Peter van Lyre, a fellow refugee in Wesel who had the financial means to provide for the widow and her children (how many is unclear; records only refer to her having ‘many’ children).