Insurrection 133in November 1617 with a decree which for practical purposes withdrew
the remaining civic rights of Prague and placed it under full royal con-
trol, while in December a new press law imposed censorship, with all
publications thereafter requiring prior approval from the chancellor.^1
Individuals too were affected. In country areas there were many
reports of Catholic landowners applying pressure on their tenants to
return to Catholicism, a clear breach of the Letter of Majesty, and of
some individuals choosing to emigrate rather than to comply. Such
reports were disputed by the Catholic side, and some of them may well
have been exaggerated or untrue, but they none the less added to the
Protestant perception of growing persecution. Some pastors certainly
lost their livings, and some urban officials likewise lost their posts, while
even those at the top felt the pressure personally. Thurn was the most
prominent loser. In 1612 he had gained the prestigious and particu-
larly well-paid office of warden of Karlstein, the principal royal castle
outside Prague and the traditional repository of the Bohemian royal
coronation regalia, replacing Slavata in the post as one of a number of
offices conceded to Protestants on Matthias’s accession to the crown.
After Ferdinand’s coronation he lost it again, this time to Martinitz,
although he was compensated with a nominally more senior but polit-
ically insignificant post in the legal system, which moreover carried
only a fraction of the salary. Arguably he was luckier than some, as
he was one of the very few Protestants left holding any royal office in
Bohemia.
In December 1617 Matthias took his leave of Prague and moved the
royal seat back to Vienna, ostensibly to be nearer Hungary, where the
process of securing the crown for Ferdinand was proving troublesome,
but largely as a matter of his own personal preference. He also took
Zden ̆ek Lobkowitz with him, so that the Bohemians, who had long
been used to having their king on the spot, now found themselves gov-
erned at a distance, with even their chancellor based in Vienna. Instead
a council of ten regents was appointed to manage the administration,
with Slavata and Martinitz among its most influential members and
only a token three Protestants included, all minor figures, while Thurn,
who even in his new position should by rank have warranted a place,
was left out. The real power, however, lay in Vienna with Khlesl and
Lobkowitz, who in an age of slow communications were in more than
one sense out of touch, as events were to prove.
Angry and frustrated by the gradual but continual encroachments
on the rights gained by the Protestants through the Letter of Majesty,
their leaders needed a substantive issue upon which they could make a