In the last years of the fifteenth century men of higher rank, townsmen and nobles, of whom Kostka of Postupic was the first, began to join the community. It now became more difficult to maintain the early regulations in their entire severity. Some of the brethren complained that they incurred persecution on the part of their fellow-citizens because they had refused to hold municipal offices or to appear as witnesses in the law-courts. Two parties soon formed themselves in the Unity. One, known as the "large party," was in favour of somewhat relaxing the rigour of the original regulations; this was evidently necessary if the community was to expand and to acquire the protection of some of the nobles, without which it could hardly have continued to exist long in Bohemia. The other party, known as the "small party," adhered strictly to the original regulations. Many attempts at a reconciliation were made, and frequent meetings of the elders of the Unity took place for this purpose, generally at Reichenau on the Kněžna, or at Brandeis on the Orlice. A last effort of reconciliation was made in 1496, when numerous members of both parties met at Chlumec. Here, as at the previous conferences, both parties maintained their previous views, and the discussion only proved that the standpoints were entirely different and an agreement impossible. Though even after this attempts at mediation were made, the "small party," led by Brother Amos, now seceded from the main body of the community, and after a few years it entirely disappears. The "large party," on the other hand, freed from the original exaggerated regulations, obtained great and deserved fame in Bohemia; it became the cradle of almost all those who, in the last century of Bohemian independence, were prominent as statesmen or authors.