To their great surprise, however, they at first met with a rebuff. Wenceslaus was desirous of recovering his position as Emperor; and for that he needed German support. He also wished to appear as the orthodox champion of the Church; and a recent event had brought home to him the danger into which the Bohemian Reformers were running, in this respect. Stephen Pálec̆ and Stanislaus of Znojem had been sent as commissioners to the Council of Pisa; on their way thither they had been arrested at Bologna and imprisoned as heretics. This so alarmed the king, that when the Bohemian Deputation waited on him at Kutna Hora, he not only rejected their proposals, but sharply rebuked Hus and his friends for bringing discredit on the nation by tainting them with heresy. Consistency of purpose, however, was never one of the virtues of Wenceslaus. A Bohemian nobleman of the name of Lobkovic had considerable influence with the king; and he was a strong champion of Hus and his party. He pointed out to Wenceslaus that those who proposed this reform at the University were the supporters of the king’s policy in the Council of Pisa. Queen Sophia, with whom Hus had already become a favourite, no doubt used her influence in the same direction. The king was convinced that his interests were, for the time, on the side of the Reformers; and, in January, 1409, he issued the desired decree which granted three votes to the Bohemian Nation in University elections. But the powerful German party did not yield without a struggle. They pleaded that their oaths as Masters of Arts bound them to maintain the settlement made by Charles IV.; and they pointed out that that Emperor had intended to make his University the centre of all the learning of the Empire. Finally they suggested that, if the Bohemian Nation objected to be swamped by them, it ought to separate from them and have a council, tribunal, and elections of its own. Of these arguments, the first may be fairly dismissed as one of those pieces of ill-tempered rhetoric which are usually thrust forward on such occasions. If an oath to maintain the laws of an association implies an opposition to any possible change in those laws, there can be few corporations in the world which are not deeply tainted with perjury. But the second argument, which appealed to the wishes and intentions of Charles IV., had undoubtedly some plausibility, especially when one considers that the University was only sixty years old. An answer to this objection could, however, be easily found by the Bohemians. Though Charles IV. had no doubt desired to make the University the centre of the Empire, other words of his could be quoted to show that he had also intended that his Foundation should secure special advantages to the Bohemians.