Page:The Hussite wars, by the Count Lützow.djvu/317

The members of the Council were not alone in blaming the conduct of the Bishop of Pelhřimov. When, after the sitting of the Council, the Bohemian delegates met at the house of Prokop the Great, John of Rokycan strongly expressed his disapproval of the personal attacks which the Táborite bishop had made against the Roman Catholic priests. At this meeting the Bohemians also discussed the question who was, as their spokesman, to defend the third article of Prague. According to the wishes of Utraquist nobles and of the Praguers this duty was to devolve on Rokycan. The Táborites, however, raised strong objections to this plan, and violently attacked the Utraquist nobles, whom they accused of no longer being faithful to the Hussite cause. The Utraquist nobles, always readier to make sacrifices for the common cause than were the Táborites, gave way, and thus for a time avoided a complete scission among the Bohemian parties. The priest Ulrich of Znoymo was chosen to defend the third article in the place of Rokycan. Ulrich spoke with great moderation, and his dissertation, which he only concluded on January 24, gave rise to no disturbing incidents. John Payne—known as Magister Engliš—was, according to the agreement, to speak on the fourth article. He had been chosen by the Orphans, the party to which he then belonged, though he afterwards joined the Táborites. Payne’s vehement speech, in which he highly praised Wycliffe and lengthily referred to the controversies in which he had been involved at Oxford because of his partisanship for that English divine, caused great irritation. Some of the English prelates who were present strongly protested against his account of the long-past-over struggles in England in which he had taken part. The oration of Payne, who evidently spoke with that acrimony so frequent among exiles, began on the 26th and ended on the 28th of January. Immediately afterwards Rokycan, in a very conciliatory speech, gave a summary of all the arguments which had been brought out by the Bohemian orators. He again thanked the members of the Council for