The Habsburg Brothers’ Feud 109and it is reported that Thurn already had 500 men after three days and
was nearing his complement inside a week.
Most of the emperor’s advisers were pressing him to make further
concessions, and they persuaded him to authorise Sternberg to re-open
negotiations. On 30 June the latter met a group of the directors led by
Budowetz, where one of the most significant points arising was the pos-
sibility that if the Protestants obtained all their demands they would be
in a position to oppress the Catholics rather than vice versa. The nego-
tiators went back and forth for most of the next week, during which
this objection was dealt with by drafting a separate agreement between
the Protestant and Catholic members of the Estates, while Rudolf was
gradually forced to give ground and to concede almost all the remain-
ing points. He eventually signed the Letter of Majesty on 9 July 1609,
although Lobkowitz firmly refused to add his own signature as chan-
cellor, so that Sternberg had to sign in his place. The members of
the Estates were then quickly summoned back to Prague, so that the
meeting could reconvene and formally incorporate the Letter and the
accompanying agreement into the law of the land. In a separate docu-
ment a few weeks later Rudolf also conceded to the new defensors the
important right to meet freely and to present a complaint whenever
Protestant rights appeared to have been infringed, and a short while
later, on 20 August, he also had to issue a similar Letter of Majesty for
Silesia.^23
These events have been seen as a virtual dress rehearsal for the revolt
of 1618, and many of the leading figures did indeed reappear in similar
roles at that time, while the settlement itself contained the seeds of the
future disputes leading up to the defenestration. The Letter of Majesty
granted all the principal demands of the Protestant Estates, guarantee-
ing that no-one, of whatever status, was to be obliged by any overlord to
change his religion, and according equal rights to Catholics and adher-
ents of the Bohemian Confession of 1575, although this definition left
the position of the Bohemian Brethren at best uncertain. Moreover the
Letter was less than precise about the situation of those of one confes-
sion living in the jurisdiction of a lord of another persuasion, in that
their rights to actually exercise their religion by attending or building
churches and appointing their own ministers were more implicit than
explicit, an aspect which was soon to give rise to further disputes.^24
There was also one noteworthy difference between the Letter of Majesty
and the parallel agreement between the Catholic and Protestant factions
in the Estates signed on the same day, namely that the provision con-
cerning freedom of religion for the peasants in the former document was