Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/203

 does not appear to have been very clear, for he and his colleagues did not assist again at the meetings of the conference, which therefore broke up. Palec and the other members of the theological faculty, declaring that they were afraid of the anger of King Venceslas, left Bohemia and retired to foreign countries, where they continued to stir up public opinion not only against Hus and his disciples, but also against the King and Queen of Bohemia and their court. Many of their falsehoods and fictions were circulated at Constance and have even found their way into books written centuries after these events. King Venceslas was not unnaturally indignant at the departure of Palec, which accentuated the failure of another attempt to re-establish concord in his kingdom. By a decree published in the month of April 1414 he pronounced the sentence of banishment against Palec and his companions and gave the order that other masters should in order of seniority obtain the offices that had become vacant.

Hus had on leaving Prague again retired to the castle of Kozi Hradek. He seems now to have despaired of a reconciliation between the contending parties and to have spoken even more openly than before. Now, as ever, he dwelt little in his sermons on controversial matters of theology, but he exhorted the peasants who flocked to his preaching to lead honest, chaste, pious, and abstemious lives and to demand that the priests, who, according to the church, were superior to them in authority, should at least not be inferior to them in their private life. Hus preached not only in the immediate neighbourhood of Kozi Hradek, but also at more distant places such as Usti, Lhota, and at Cerveny Dvur, where, according to a very ancient tradition, he said mass in a barn. His sermons, preached of course in the national language, attracted great crowds and caused intense enthusiasm. The neighbourhood of Tabor henceforth became the centre of the