The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Cambridge modern history. Vol. IV, The Thiry Years' War / planned by the late Lord Acton ; edited by A.W. Ward, G.W. Prothero, Stanley Leathes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    51/1044 (page 15)
    1611-7] Klostergrab.—Bohemian Diet of 1617. consisting of the Protestant councillors and officials, and six deputies from every Circle in the kingdom—about a hundred in all,—was law- fully summoned to Prague by the Defensores appointed under the Letter of Majesty; and this assembly, while bidding the Braunauers go on building their church, apprised the Regents (who presided over the government in the absence of the King) that the Protestant Estates intended to adhere to the plain sense of their religious charter (November, 1611). After this the Braunauers were left unmolested. But the partisans of the Catholic Reaction, headed by the new Archbishop of Prague, were not to be thus easily repressed, and after several previous encroachments provided a parallel case to that of Braunau at Klostergrab in the north-west. The Protestant citizens of this little town, which claimed to be free but stood under the lordship of the monastery of Ossegg, whose revenues belonged to the Archbishop, deeply resented his high-handed closing of a church which they had built for their worship, and their being forced by him to attend the Catholic services (December, 1614). This time the Defensores protested in vain; and, though the Protestant grievances were brought forward at a General Diet of the Bohemian Estates and those of the incorporated lands held early in the following summer, the Government of Matthias, who had himself come to Prague, peremptorily ordered the closing of the Protestant churches at both Braunau and Klostergrab. A joint representation to Matthias by all the higher Protestant officials of Bohemia was equally ineffectual; and by the end of 1616 the first and governing clause of the great Letter had been directly violated by a number of Catholic incumbents, who flatly prohibited their parishioners from attending Protestant worship outside their parishes. But the movement was not at an end, and in the opinion of the Protestant leaders the future was their own. Already in 1614 Thurn had assured the Elector of Saxony that the old hereditary union (Erbeinigung) between the two lands was unforgotten in Bohemia, on whose throne it was desired to place him. Other speculations and combinations as to that throne were rife during the years next ensuing; and about February, 1617, Ludwig Camerarius, now one of the most active Palatine councillors and afterwards the mainstay of his master’s cause in its darkest days, put in an appearance at Prague. Still, no definite plan of action was laid, and no candidate for the Bohemian throne was distinctly selected. Of a sudden, into the midst of an atmosphere overcharged with electricity, came the news that the Bohemian Diet was summoned for June 5, 1617, to appoint a King. The united House of Habsburg had resolved to make sure of the future as well as of the present, and, taking its stand upon the plain principle of hereditary right, to force upon the Bohemian Estates, still unprepared with a plan of resistance, and upon the people, not yet ready for a revolution, Archduke Ferdinand, the pupil of the Jesuits, the religious