by this demonstration. They caused the women to be arrested, and ordered them to separate. Those who were married were to stand apart, and the other ones also. All were shown where to stand. The women refused to obey this order and declined to separate. The town-councillors then ordered the women to deliver to them the letter which had been read out, but this also they refused to do. The councillors then became angry. Leaving the town-hall, they gave the order that the crowd of women should be locked up in the council-chamber. They were, however, after two hours allowed to leave the council-chamber unharmed.[1]
The courageous initiative of the Bohemian women proved successful. The priests of the Utraquist Church were reinstated in their parishes, while the agitators either retired to Tábor or continued, led by their ringleader, the priest John, to cause disturbances in Prague. This conduct was all the more reprehensible because the country was—as already stated—at that moment again attacked on all its frontiers by ferocious and fanatical foreign enemies. One of the principal objects of Zělivo and his partisans was to impede and, if possible, to break off the alliance of the Praguers with the Utraquist nobility. When the assembly of the Bohemian estates took place at Kutna Hora in August, it was found that the envoys of Prague had no credentials. The assembly therefore declined to admit them to its deliberations, but sent two of its members, Vávak of Hradec and John Sadlo of Kostelec, who had formerly been private secretary to King Venceslas, to Prague to complain of this omission. On their arrival in Prague the two Bohemian lords earnestly exhorted the citizens not to hinder the proceedings of the national assembly by their opposition, and they very strongly rebuked the priest John of Zělivo, telling him that it was not beseeming for a priest to interfere in worldly matters. In spite of the influence of the party of priest John, the magistrates of Prague finally decided to forward to their
- ↑ Tomek, History of the Town of Prague, Vol. IV. pp. 191–192.
