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 religious reforms which the Protestant princes had introduced into their territories, and their confiscations of former Church lands, thereby received the Emperor's sanction. The Peace of Augsburg contained no reference to Bohemia, but it greatly encouraged the Lutheran party in that country.

After the abdication of Charles V (1558) Ferdinand succeeded him as Emperor. Shortly before his death he caused his son Maximilian, with whom he was now on better terms, to be crowned as King of Bohemia (1562). In the year 1564 Ferdinand entered into new negotiations with Pope Pius IV for the purpose of reconciling the moderate utraquists with the Roman Church. The death of Ferdinand in the same year (July 25, 1564) interrupted these negotiations.

Maximilian, as mentioned above, had already been crowned King of Bohemia, and succeeded his father without opposition as ruler of that country. "Maximilian differed from most of his contemporaries, who were generally either fiery adherents or bitter enemies of Catholicism. During the whole of his life he was unable to make up his mind definitely for or against the Catholic cause. He played the part of a discontented son as long as his father lived, opposed him, and surrounded himself with enemies of the Catholic Church; he avoided the religious functions of that Church, and the Protestants founded great hopes on his accession to the throne; but as soon as he succeeded his father he abandoned his former attitude, began to favour the Catholics, and publicly conformed to their creed."

Maximilian also succeeded his father as Emperor, and as King of Hungary, and he further inherited part of the old dominions of the house of Habsburg, Upper and Lower Austria. Other duties therefore prevented him from immediately assuming the government of Bohemia, where his younger brother Ferdinand continued to act as regent.

It was only in 1567 that the new king visited Bohemia.