Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/459

 After this, as all the barons of Bohemia were assembled in the abbey of St. James, about the affairs of the realm, where the archbishop of Prague was also present, there the said John Huss presented supplications, by which he most humbly desired the barons, that they would show him this favour towards the said archbishop: that if the said archbishop did suspect him of any error or heresy, he would declare it openly, and that he was ready to endure and suffer correction for the same at his hands. And if that he had found or perceived no such thing in him, that he would then give him a testimonial thereof, through which he, being as it were armed, might the more freely go unto Constance. The said archbishop confessed openly, before all the assembly of barons, that he knew not that John Huss was culpable or faulty in any crime or offence, and this was his only counsel: that the said John Huss should purge himself of the excommunication he had incurred. This report which the archbishop had given of John Huss, doth appear by the letters which the barons of Bohemia sent unto the emperor Sigismund by the said Huss, in the town of Constance.

Finally, all the prelates and clergy assembled together in the town of Prague, in the archbishop's court, where appeared personally the worshipful Master John Jessenitz, doctor of decretals and procurer, in the name and behalf of the honourable man, Master John Huss, requiring that either the said Master John Huss, or that he, in the name and behalf of him, might be suffered to come into the archbishop's court, to the presence of the archbishop and the prelates who were there congregated together, forasmuch as Master John Huss is ready to satisfy all men who shall require him to show any reason of his faith or hope which he holdeth, and to see and hear all and singular who were there gathered together; that is to say, the lord archbishop and prelates, or any of them who would lay any manner of obstinacy, or error, or heresy unto him: that they should there write in their names, and according both unto God's law and man's, and the canon law, prepare themselves to suffer like punishment, if they could not lawfully prove any obstinacy of error or heresy against him: unto whom altogether he would, by God's help, answer before the said archbishop and the prelates in the next general council holden at Constance, and stand unto the law; and, according to the canons and decretals of the holy fathers, show forth and declare his innocency in the name of Christ. Unto which Master John of Jessenitz, doctor, one called Ulricus Swabe, of Swabenitz, marshal of the said archbishop, coming forth of the said court, did utterly deny unto the said master doctor and his party, all manner of ingress and entrance into the court, and to the presence of the archbishop aforesaid, and of the prelates there gathered together; pretending that the archbishop, with the prelates aforesaid, were occupied about the king's affairs: requiring the said master doctor, that he would tarry in some place without the said court, that when the archbishop and the prelates had finished the king's affairs, he might then return, and have liberty to come into the court there. The said Master John Huss, and the doctor of law tarried awhile, entreating to be admitted into the archbishop's court; but seeing he could prevail nothing, he made there a solemn protestation of his request, that both