THE BULWARK OF CHRISTENDOM 147
were severed as a mark of desecration. Lastly, for the good of his everlasting
soul, his remains were burned.^21
The Czech Brethren followed a course which in many ways paralleled that of
their Polish counterparts. Persecuted in the Habsburg lands from the mid-
sixteenth century onwards, they looked to the Hussite tradition and to the
preservation of Czech culture. Their original settlement established at Leszno in
Wielkopolska in 1550, received an influx of several hundred families from
nearby Moravia on the outbreak there of the Thirty Years War. In 1628 it gave
shelter to the celebrated pedagogue, Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius,
1592-1671), who, on becoming Rector of the Leszno Academy, proceeded to
raise it to a scholarly centre of continental excellence. Variously known as the
Unitas Fratrum or Polska Jednota (Union of Czech Brethren in Poland), and
later as the 'Moravian Church', the Czech Brethren avoided Unitarian doc-
trines, and in this way were able to enjoy the fruits of intercommunion not only
with the local Calvinists but also with Prostestant churches abroad, including
the Church of England. At the same time, they shared many of the plebian and
radical social views of the Polish Arians, and in the 1650s shared their expulsion.
In 1656, the citizens of Leszno were suspected of voluntary collaboration with
the Swedes, and the town was burned by the Polish Army having refused to sur-
render its Swedish garrison. Komensky, accompanied by many of his associates,
emigrated to Holland. Even so, the religious community, survived in straitened
circumstances. The Academy was rebuilt in 1662 by English subscription, only
to be burned for a second time by the Russians in 1707. Its special Protestant
connections were lost when its patron, Stanislaw Leszczynski, was converted to
Catholicism, and sold his estates to the Sulkowski family; but it remained as a
centre of Polish education until 1824.^22
The British connections of the Polish Reformation have caused frequent com-
ment, and not a little surprise. The career of Jan Laski, in particular, has been the
subject of several learned studies. As 'John O'Lasco', he served as minister to the
Protestant Strangers' Church at the Austin Friars in London in the reign of
Edward VI, and exerted a definite influence on the formulation of the Book of
Common Prayer. Other contacts are less well publicized. Shortly before Laski's
departure, in 1553, an unknown Pole in London produced the earliest tract in
Polish to be published in England - Rzecz Pana Jana Ksyczecia Nortumberskiego,
being a translation of the recantation on the gallows of John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland, the father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey. In addition to the usual
stream of incidental travellers, there were Poles, including Boguslaw Leszczynski
in 1633 and Daniel Ernest Jablonski (Figulus, 1660-1741), Komensky's grandson
in 1680-3, who chose to study at Oxford for religious reasons. Similarly,
Poland-Lithuania sheltered a number of exiles from Great Britain. In the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband,
Richard Bertie, found a home with the Radziwills at Nieswiez. In the early
seventeenth century, large numbers of Scots settled in the Republic. The Catholics
among them gravitated to episcopal cities such as Chelmno, where their