Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

whom the late changes had been made, were
summoned before the king's tribunal to justify their
doings; but, not obeying the summons, they were
outlawed. In April, 1526, the king in person visited
Dantzic; the citizens, as a precaution against
change, received the monarch in arms; but the
royal troops, and the armed retainers of the Popish
lords who accompanied the king, so greatly
outnumbered the Reformers that they were
overawed, and submitted to the court. A royal
decree restored the Roman Catholic worship;
fifteen of the leading Reformers were beheaded,
and the rest banished; the citizens were ordered to
return within the Roman pale or quit Dantzic; the
priests and monks who had abandoned the Roman
Church were exiled, and the churches appropriated
to Protestant worship were given back to mass.
This was a sharp castigation for leaving the
peaceful path. Nevertheless, the movement in
Dantzic was only arrested, not destroyed. Some
years later, there came an epidemic to the city, and
amid the sick and the dying there stood up a pious
Dominican, called Klein, to preach the Gospel. The
citizens, awakened a second time to eternal things,
9