The Lords of Diepholz owned the Hollburg Castle between Holßel [nds] and Midlum on the brink of the Wesermünde Geest ridge,[1] allowing a good view over the lower Land of Wursten.

[8] Unlike unsettled and undeveloped areas where Cistercians usually founded new monasteries the farmlands donated to the convent were held by feudal tenants and sparsed in and around Midlum.

All over the parish of Midlum, e.g. in Sorthum,[9] Northum,[10] Wenckebüttel and Esigstedt,[11] the convent acquired the overlordship to farmlands from those lords who held it before,[12] in order to round off its demesne.

[12] In the valley cuts of the geest between Holßel and Nordholz the convent impounded little becks in order to lay out stewponds for the fish as fasting dishes at lent.

[12] The convent's demesne expansion meant the exclusive usage of geest forests, mires and heaths, previously also commonly used by the free Frisian peasants from the mostly treeless Land of Wursten in order to gain turf, firewood, timber and the fertilising plaggen.

[8] The Wursten Frisians remembered the ordeal of the free Stedingen peasants in 1234, who refused to accept feudal overlordship too, but whom Gebhard had excommunicated and against whom he induced and fought a papally confirmed crusade, all after few Stedingers had slain an itinerant monk.

[16] Prince-Archbishop Gilbert considered the convent his outpost to wield influence in the free peasant areas of the Lands of Hadeln and of Wursten as well as among separatist noble vassals such as the Lappes [de].

[19] In 1331 the commoner Gerhard de Merne (= Marren, Süder- and Nordermarren near Midlum) usurped the tithe from Esigstedt, protested by the convent, the enfranchised beneficiary, and left it again to the nuns only after the pastors of the Wursten parishes had intervened.

[19] In 1484 the Wursten Frisians repelled John V, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, also ruling in close-by Hadeln, and his troops in the Battle of Alsum, trying to subject them to his feudal overlordship.

John's son, Hadeln's Regent Magnus, the heir apparent of Saxe-Lauenburg tried to grind out his father's notch and hired the Great or Black Guard in order to subject the Land of Wursten.

[26] For the upcoming prince-archiepiscopal response the Wursten Frisians allied with their former enemy Duke Magnus I of Saxe-Lauenburg, who confirmed their autonomy in return for rendering him homage.

On 8 September 1518 ducal forces arriving by ship and Wursten fighters attacking from the land side razed the brandnew prince-archiepiscopal Morgenstern Castle [nds] in Weddewarden [de].

In 1518 Prioress Wommella Wachmans appealed to the Wursten Consuls not to incite or even undertake the ravaging of houses and looting of grain and firewood from the convent's feudal tenants.