 Alcohol features largely in very many accounts, perhaps in some cases because in Netherlandish law being drunk could be regarded as a mitigating factor in criminal sentencing.<ref>Arnade, 105–111</ref>

The destruction frequently included ransacking the priest's house, and sometimes private houses suspected of sheltering church goods.There was much looting of common household goods from clergy houses and monasteries, and some street robberies of women's jewellery by the crowd; after the images were smashed and the property occupied, "men fed their stomachs in a carnivalesque indulgence of beer, bread, butter and cheese, while women carted off provisions for the kitchen or bedroom".<ref>Arnade, 111–112 (quote from 112); 102 for women's jewellery robbed.</ref>

There are many accounts of rituals of inversion, in which the church sometimes stood for the whole social order.Children sometimes participated enthusiastically, and street games afterwards became play battles between "papists" and "beggars".