Stedingen

The arrangement found great favor among the younger Dutch peasants, who went to settle the area in large numbers, despite the difficulty of cultivating the marshy moorland, where the soil was poor and Heath, cotton grass and reeds covered the land and the riverbank.

[1] The Stedingers accused the Count's vassals of rape and kidnapping, and determined at their Thing or popular assembly to proclaim total independence, to refuse to pay their feudal tithes, to build bulwarks with fortified gates and trenches along the roads, and to form militias in order to defend against any encroachment.

When a mendicant friar who was traveling through the territory proclaimed in a sermon that "Disobedience was idolatry," he was attacked by the inhabitants, who then embarked on a spate of anti-clerical violence, sacking monasteries and killing clergy.

The Archbishop, resolved on enforcing his demands, built Schlutterburg Castle on the border of the Stedinger territory, in which he installed his brother, Lord Herman II of Lippe.

On the 17th of March 1230, Gerard convened a council at Bremen, where the abbots and higher clergy of the archbishopric were to try the Stedingers for their refusal to obey feudal law, for rioting, sacrilege, and murder, and for allegedly worshipping images of wax, seeking counsel from soothsayers, and consorting with evil spirits.

The rest of the Stedingers had taken a position by Altenesch under Detmar tom Diek and Tammo von Huntrop, where they too were defeated after heavy resistance.