Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/174

 and Sigismund, King of Hungary. The news of the arrival of the Englishmen soon reached the hospitable citizens of Prague and the Englishmen were invited to a banquet by the rector of the university. Sir Hartung, probably aware of the theological strife then raging at the university, politely declined the invitation, but when John Stokes, evidently a novice in matters of diplomacy, was questioned as to the cause of the refusal, he plunged boldly into the Wycliffe controversy. He publicly declared that whoever should read the works of Master John Wycliffe, or should study them, even if he had the best intentions and the firmest faith, must in course of time become involved in heresy. Hus, always zealous for what he believed to be truth, traversed Stokes’s foolish statement and challenged him to a public disputation at the university in the manner then customary. This challenge Stokes declined, alleging that he had come to Bohemia on diplomatic business, being on his way to the court of King Sigismund. Characteristically, Stokes, who was either very little versed in the ways of diplomacy, or irritated by the “Lollard” movement which, he thought, he had discovered in Prague, described in his letter King Sigismund as “Dei gratia regem Ungariae, nec non ad regem Romanorum electum unicum.” Venceslas still claimed to be King of the Romans, and the words of Stokes were bound to give grave offence to the King of Bohemia and his court. Though declining the challenge for the moment, Stokes, however, made the somewhat suspicious suggestion that a disputation should take place later either in Paris or at the papal court. It was probable in the former, and certain in the latter case that a Bohemian who attempted to uphold Wycliffe’s views there would never have returned to his own country. Stokes, belonging to the period of reaction against Lollardism in England, appears to have been a thorough ultramontane, if we can apply the word to so remote a period. At Constance he attacked Hus and wished to produce as evidence against him a book that he had found at