It was in these quarrels with his clergy that Wenceslaus first showed that tendency to violent methods, which undermined his own power and inflicted great injury on the cause of Church reformation. In 1385 he was involved in a quarrel with the Dean of Breslau. It appeared that a cask of beer sent to the dean by his brother had been intercepted by the Town Council, on the ground that no foreign beer should be admitted into the town. The dean, therefore, laid an interdict upon Breslau. Wenceslaus came to inquire into the matter, and demanded that the religious services should be celebrated, as long at least as he stayed in the town. The dean refused; and thereupon Wenceslaus banished the whole Chapter of Breslau from the town for two years, and handed over a large part of their property to the citizens. But the most dangerous of his clerical enemies was the Archbishop of Prague, John of Jenstein. The Archbishop, himself of noble birth, had had a quarrel with the Marshal of the Court about certain rights of fishing on the Elbe; and, in asserting these rights, he had destroyed a weir which the marshal had made. Wenceslaus took the side of his official, and demanded that the Archbishop should make compensation. Jenstein refused; and Wenceslaus thereupon confiscated his property. But these acts, however arbitrary, might possibly have been forgotten, had they not been followed by a more celebrated quarrel. In the year 1393 the Vice Chamberlain, who was the chief judge of the royal law-court, had put to death two priests. It is uncertain what their offences were; but the Archbishop claimed them as under his jurisdiction, and asserted that they should only have been tried in his court. About the same time, the Archbishop had wished to seize and punish certain Jews, who, after being baptised as Christians, had relapsed into Judaism. As the Jews were under the special protection of the King’s court, the Vice Chamberlain refused to surrender them to the Archbishop. For these two acts of opposition to his power, the Archbishop excommunicated the Vice Chamberlain, and denounced him as a heretic. The King received this news with great indignation; and his anger was still further quickened by a more personal insult. Not long before this time, he had recommended a special favourite to a bishopric in Pomerania; but, as the rulers of Pomerania had resisted the appointment, Wenceslaus had been unable to establish his claim. He was therefore resolved to endow a new bishopric in Bohemia, to which his nominee could be appointed; and the death of the abbot of a monastery in Prague suggested to the King the advisability of suppressing the monastery in order to obtain funds for the endowment of his new bishopric. The Archbishop opposed the creation of this bishopric as a diminution of his own diocese; and he may very likely have considered the suppression of the monastery as an act of injustice. In defiance,