The opposition of the bishops to these laws was supported even by many Protestants, especially by the more orthodox Lutherans, who feared the effect of this increased subjection of all churches to the state; they were opposed also by the Conservative members of the Upper House. All, however, was unavailing. Bismarck in this case gave the Liberals a free hand, and the laws eventually were carried and proclaimed on the 15th of May 1873; hence they got the name of the May laws, by which they are always known. The bishops meanwhile had held a meeting at Fulda, at the tomb of St Boniface, whence they addressed a protest to the king, and declared that they would be unable to recognize the laws as valid. They were supported in this by the pope, who addressed a protest personally to the emperor. The laws were put into force with great severity. Within a year six Prussian bishops were imprisoned, and in over 1300 parishes the administration of public worship was suspended. The first sufferer was the cardinal archbishop of Posen, Count Ledochowski. He refused to report to the president of the province appointments of incumbents; he refused also to allow the government commissioners to inspect the seminaries for priests, and when he was summoned before the new court refused to appear. He was then deprived of the temporalities of his office; but the Polish nobles continued to support him, and he continued to act as bishop. Heavy fines were imposed upon him, but he either could not or would not pay them, and in March 1874 he was condemned to imprisonment for two years, and dismissed from his bishopric. The bishop of Trier, the archbishop of Cologne, and other bishops soon incurred a similar fate. These measures of the government, however, did not succeed in winning over the Catholic population, and in the elections for the Reichstag in January 1874 the party of the Centre increased in number from 63 to 91; 1,443,170 votes were received by them. In Bavaria the Ultramontanes won a complete victory over the more moderate Catholics. The Prussian government proceeded to further measures. According to the ordinary practice towards parties in opposition, public meetings were broken up on the smallest pretence, and numerous prosecutions for insult to government officials (_Beamtenbeleidigung_) were brought against members of the party. The Catholic agitation was, however, carried on with increased vigour throughout the whole empire; over a hundred newspapers were founded (three years before there had been only about six Catholic papers in the whole of Germany), and great numbers of pamphlets and other polemical works were published. The bishops from their prisons continued to govern the dioceses; for this purpose they appointed representatives, to whom they transferred their rights as ordinary and secretly authorized priests to celebrate services and to perform the other duties of an incumbent. To meet this a further law was