THE NOBLE DEMOCRACY 261
dominium which his enemies feared. But his narrow, Catholic piety and his
blatant indifference to the public affairs of the Republic schooled a large num-
ber of malcontents. A Swede by birth and upbringing, he aped the Germanic
manners and style of the court of Vienna, and surrounded himself with Jesuits
and grandees. The royal court in Warsaw was largely run by German personnel,
specially imported from Bavaria. The Regalist party, headed by Piotr Skarga,
the King's Confessor; Piotr Myszkowski, Grand Marshal of the Crown; Maciej
Pstrokonski, Bishop of Przemysl and Vice-Chancellor; and by Hieronim
Gostomski, Palatine of Poznan, certainly dabbled with plans for introducing a
hereditary monarchy; for strengthening the executive with extra-parliamentary
taxes and a standing army, and for wide-ranging collaboration with the House
of Habsburg. In consequence, a conflict developed, not dissimilar to that in
Jacobean England, where the loud-mouthed companions of a faint-hearted
King, enamoured of the fashionable theories of Divine Right, needlessly dis-
turbed the traditional balance between Crown and Parliament. Already, in the
Sejm of 1605, the Chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, had threatened to have the King
deported to Sweden if he did not pay more serious attention to the feelings of the
country; and Zamoyski's death in the following year removed the last restraint
on the frustrations of the opposition. His mantle fell on more excitable men, and
in particular on Michal Zebrzydowski (1553-1620), Palatine of Cracow, on
Janusz Radziwill (1579-1620), and on Cardinal Maciejowski, Bishop of
Cracow. The greatest offence was given in December 1605 by the King's mar-
riage by proxy in Gratz to the Archduchess Constance, a marriage arranged
unconstitutionally, without the consent of the Sejm. What is more, in the course
of the nuptial celebrations in Cracow, the King summarily requisitioned a house
belonging to Zebrzydowski and pilfered Maciejowski's papal baldachin from
the cathedral. As Zebrzydowski shouted, 'Either I leave my house, or the king
leaves his kingdom!' Having registered a protest in vain at the dietine of
Cracow, Zebrzydowski proceeded to summon the nobility to a series of armed
gatherings, at Steczyca, at Lublin, and finally at Sandomierz. On this last occa-
sion, the nobility, drawn up on horseback, formally proclaimed the Rokosz, and
elected Janusz Radziwitt as their Marshal. Apart from the malcontent mag-
nates, they included a large number of petty nobles fearful of their privileges, of
Protestants alarmed by mounting Catholic oppression, and of Orthodox resent-
ful of the recent Church Union. They placed 50,400 signatures to an Act of
Confederation which contained sixty-seven points of remonstrance. Their par-
ticular grievances, however, were of small account compared with the general
feeling, which they all shared, that the ancient traditions of the state were under
assault:
Our ancestors ... knew that they were born nobles rather than Catholics, that they were
not descended from Levi, and that Poland is a political kingdom, not a clerical one; they
knew that the Holy Church is the guest of the states of this world, not their hereditary
master; and they knew what was due to the Lord God, and what to the country. They did
not mix holy religion with politics, and did not submit either to priests or gluttons.^14