During the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, a Calvinist rebel group set themselves up to battle the Catholic Church in the Netherlands.

In June 1572, Gorkum fell to the Dutch, and the mentioned rebels captured nine Franciscan friars, two lay brothers, and also a parish priest with his assistant.

Wouters and his 18 fellow martyrs were beatified just over a century after their deaths, after many miraculous things were attributed to their intercession, including the curing of hernias in particular.

Their canonizations were on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul in 1867, as a part of the grand celebrations for the 1800th anniversary of the two apostles' martyrdoms.

Brielle, the place of the martyrdom, was a site of many pilgrimages and processions before the martyrs' relics were transferred to the Church of Saint Nicholas in Brussels, Belgium.