Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/38

 of the priestly office. After this, both Rokycana and King George proceeded to severe measures against the brethren, and the matter was being deliberated at the Parliament at Beneschau, when an invasion by Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, drew the attention of both king and council to war and arms, rather than to religion and internal affairs.”

Here Palacky’s history leaves us, and, if the variations in later times between the authentic and current history of Bohemia are as great as those which he has pointed out, it will be but little use attempting more than the briefest summary of events.

Two rivals now contended for the Bohemian crown, Mathias Corvinus, the King of Hungary, and the Polish Prince Wladislaw, the former of whom was favoured by the Pope and the Catholic party, the latter by the Utraquists. Wladislaw was elected by the Parliament, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased monarch, and, after considerable struggles with both sword and pen, an arrangement was made between the rivals, under which the survivor was to succeed to the possessions of the other, if he died without legitimate heirs. Wladislaw succeeded to the crown of Hungary, and died in 1516, leaving both kingdoms to his son Lewis, a boy of ten years of age. Jordan mentions, as one reason for the election of Wladislaw as King of Bohemia, that he was perfect master of the Bohemian language, it being at that time the court language in Poland. Lewis perished in the battle of Mohacz, gained by the Turks in 1524.

In the reign of Lewis, during which the government was carried on rather by the Parliament and native statesmen than by the king. Luther’s doctrines began to enter into Bohemia. This caused a rising against the Catholic clergy, and threatened a schism among the Bohemians them-