Bartholomew Sastrow

3, had heard him preach at Wittenberg, and became a convert to the "true gospel." Smiterlow's daughter Anna married Nicholas Sastrow, a prosperous brewer and cornfactor of Greifswald, and Nicholas deserted the mass for the sermon. Their eldest son, John, was sent to study at Wittenberg, where he made the acquaintance of Luther and Melanchthon. He became something, of a scholar, wrote in praise of the English divine, Robert Barns, and was crowned poet laureate by Charles V in 1544. The second son was Bartholomew, author of these memoirs. Three years after his arrival the family life at Greifswald was rudely disturbed. Bartholomew's father had the misfortune to commit manslaughter (uncharitable people called it murder), and Greifswald was made too hot to hold the peccant cornfactor. The father of our chronicler lived in banishment for several years, while his wife brought up the children at Greifswald, and carried on the family business. It happened that Bartholomew's great-uncle, Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow