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CHAPTER
Part VI.—Letters Written from the Franciscan Friary
(June 5, 1415—July 5, 1415)
On the flight of John, as Mladenowic informs us, ‘the keys of the prison in which the Master was detained were handed over to the King, and he could now with honour have released him.’ Sigismund, who had overcome all his scruples concerning the safe-conduct, preferred to deliver Hus to the Bishop of Constance, upon whom, on the flight of the Pope, the care of a prisoner of the Inquisition would naturally fall. According to the statement of Hus in the lastletter, the bishop—and the cardinals also, at first—had already refused the charge. Probably that accomplished timeserver was waiting to see how the land lay and what action Sigismund would take now that he was free to act. But on receiving Sigismund’s command he delayed no longer. The Bishop, we read, fearing an attempt at release, ‘for the prison of the Blackfriars was outside the walls and the guards were few and careless, that same night took Hus, fettered in a boat, to his own castle of Gottlieben’—a few hours in fact after the last letter was written (March 24). The precaution of the Bishop—who provided for the boat a guard of a hundred and seventy armed men—shows that he expected some attempt at release, perhaps with the connivance of Sigismund. Possibly if the last letter of Hus had been despatched earlier something might have been done. As it was Hus was safely imprisoned in the west wing of Gottlieben, and the opportunity lost for ever. ‘There he lay in fetters in an airy tower.’ He could walk about all day, but ‘at night was handcuffed on his bed to the wall,’ to a block still preserved in the Museum at Constance. The ‘airy tower’ was a welcome change after the latrines. But at Gottlieben Hus missed the gaoler Robert, who had formed the link with his friends outside. Not a single letter or document written from Gottlieben
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