20 The Origins of the Thirty Years War and the Revolt in Bohemia, 1618
again refused to allow the Protestants a church and moreover banned
their preaching, both openly and within the confines of private houses,
although they still held to their earlier decision to allow Protestants
access to civic offices.
Previously the city had been generally peaceful apart from minor
inter-confessional disturbances, but matters then escalated and a more
significant riot took place, followed by further political action. Protes-
tant mayors had occasionally been elected before without creating a
problem, but in 1581 the Catholic and Protestant factions on the coun-
cil each ‘elected’ their own candidates to office. Although a compromise
was later reached some of the Catholic office-holders moved out and
set up a form of government in exile in Jülich, while renewed com-
plaints were made to the emperor, and as a result the city was for a time
blockaded by forces under the duke of Jülich and the bishop of Liège.^17
In early 1583 the Protestant-controlled council went further by autho-
rising the open practice of religion which conformed to the Augsburg
Confession. This raised not only the religious issue itself but also the
question of the right of a free city, as opposed to its overlord, the
emperor, to make changes to the religious status quo. Further com-
missions of enquiry followed, and the matter increasingly became
embroiled in the wider inter-confessional dispute in the Empire. The
process moved very slowly, until eventually in 1593 the Hofrat found
against the city, threatened it with the Imperial ban, and demanded the
restitution of the situation as it had been in 1560.^18 The council did
not comply, but even then the ban was not ratified by the emperor and
implemented until 1598, when troops were sent to besiege the city, the
council revoked its authorisation of Protestant worship before resign-
ing, and a new, completely Catholic council was installed. Some leading
Protestants were expelled and their chapels and schools were closed,
thus settling the issue for another decade.^19
As the century drew to a close, law suits over church property in
Protestant territories continued to occupy the Kammergericht and to
give new prominence to the problem of the stalemate in the appeals
mechanism. This came to a head during the late 1590s, when the ‘four
cloisters’ cases were made the subject of a confrontation initiated by
the Palatinate and other militant Protestant territories. Two monaster-
ies and two convents were involved, and in two cases these had been
secularised and the claim was for their return, while in the other two
the issue was interference in the affairs of the religious institutions by
the Protestant secular authorities.^20 The defendants ranged from the
important margrave of Baden to a minor count, the free Imperial city