At last the procession entered Poland, and the Brothers settled for a time in the town of Posen. But, though many of the Polish nobles welcomed them heartily, the Bishop of Posen stirred up the King of Poland against them, and put them to such inconveniences, that many of the Brotherhood accepted the invitation of the Elector of Brandenburg to settle in his newly conquered province of Prussia. Not even in Prussia, however, were the troubles of the exiles at an end. Mitmánek, the Utraquist preacher who had been banished by Ferdinand, excited the suspicions of the Elector of Brandenburg against the new-comers, and even assured him that the Confession which Augusta had taken to Luther was not really the composition of the Brothers at all; but that, in truth, they were Arians and Novatians. An inquiry was set on foot into the real doctrines of the Brotherhood; and, though the decision of the inquisitors was mainly in favour of the Brothers, yet the restrictions placed on them by the Elector were so galling, and the pressure upon them to accept the Confession of Augsburg was so persistent, that many preferred to take their chance once more among their Slavonic kinsmen of Poland, rather than to accept the nominal protection of the Elector, when accompanied with so many practical inconveniences.
Ferdinand’s schemes, for the unification both of State and Church, seemed now ripe for further development. With regard to the question of civil government many difficulties had arisen during the Turkish wars, from the claims for local privileges put forward by various towns and districts of Bohemia. When Ferdinand had required money for the purposes of these wars, he had been forced to consider not merely the constitutional rights of the Assemblies of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and the Lausitz, but also the peculiar privileges of the district of Loket, the miners’ rights in Joachims Thal and Kutna Hora, and, above all, the extremely anomalous position of the town and district of Eger (Cheb), which had claimed, ever since the fourteenth century, to be more nearly connected with the German Empire than with the kingdom of Bohemia. And even more embarrassing than any of these legal privileges were the claims of the Assemblies of the Districts or Circles. These were perhaps the most important check, which still existed, on the power of the king. As the nobles gradually sank into mere courtiers, and as the towns became, in many instances specially dependent upon the King, that Order of Knights, which had played so important a part in the Utraquist struggles, found it more convenient to deliberate in their own districts, where they held an independent position, rather than in Prague, where they might be outvoted by lords and citizens, and overruled by officers of the King. These meetings of the Circles were gradually gaining a kind of legal authority; and, both in the Turkish and Saxon wars, they had formed an important check on the action of the Assembly at Prague, and had considerably hampered the designs of Ferdinand. They had even identified their interest at that time with the provincial claims of Moravia and Silesia; and they had maintained that an Assembly, composed only of those Bohemians who met at Prague, could not decide on so weighty a question as the war against John Frederick. Ferdinand, therefore, had come to look upon these Assemblies as his most dangerous opponents; and, though he could not at once suppress them completely, he contrived to limit their powers and control their actions.