The History of the Bohemian Persecution/Chapter 97
CHAP. XCVII.
The Reformation of Bidsove.
I. THose things which we have hitherto already related, may seem very moderate, in comparison of those which we shall now adde, (to wit) Don Martin de Henerda, played the part of a Commissioner of Reformation, and certaine others full of Spanish zeal. For example sake at Bidsove, a Towne standing three miles from Hradecium and ten from Prague. When he arrived here with his souldiers, and calling the citizens into the Court, hee commanded the Catholick Religion with an oration full of words; and John Kolacznik, whom they had chosen for themselves, answering, in the name of the corporation, that it was not in the power of man that one should unlearn that in the space of an hour, which he had been learning all his life, neither was it convenient, that any man should forsake that which hee had imbraced for the truth of God, unlesse hee were taught better things out of the word of God. There Henerda, as it were distracted and forgetting, all civility, rose hastily from the place where hee sate, and assaulting the man with a club which he held in his hand, gave him many strokes, and being full of rage commanded the Officer to come, and to carry him out of the City: (which among us is a note of the greatest disgrace) not so much as grantng him time to visit his house. The rest being terrified with this example, and fearing the fury of the inraged, did submit themselves unto his will and promised to be taught within a certain time.
2. And when that some thought to have saved their consciences by flight, they sent their wives before privately with their goods (with whom some Godly widows joyned themselves) the things being betrayed, they had those things taken away from them by souldiers sent for that purpose, and they were brought back and put in fetters, and were not dismised till they became catholicks with their husbands.