If Mary was consoled by the words of Luther, the friends of the Gospel in Hungary saw danger increasing around them. The king being dead, the ambitious Zapolya at length attained the object of his desire. He was crowned king on the 26th of November, 1526, in the ancient palace of Alba-Royal, which had been for five centuries the abode of the kings. He was not the only claimant of the sceptre of Hungary. The archduke Ferdinand of Austria, relying upon the arrangement entered into with King Ladislaus and supported by the partisans of his sister, the Queen Mary, had himself crowned at Presburg. These two kings, each aspiring to the support of Rome and of her clergy, had only one point in common—their opposition to the Reformation—and in cruelty they were to be rivals of the terrible Turk. Zapolya published, January 25, 1527, an edict against the Lutherans, and the priests immediately made use of it. The Gospel had gained adherents in all parts of the country, and particularly on the mountains and in the pleasant valleys of the Karpathians, rich in mines of silver and gold. Libethen, a town of miners, had a flourishing church, all the members of which lived in the most charming brotherhood. A rising of the laborers in the mines was the pretext of which the priests availed themselves to stir up persecution. They accused these men of peace of having instigated the revolt. The pastor succeeded in hiding himself in a deep hollow in the mines; but the rector of the school and six councillors were seized and taken to the town of Neusol. ‘Abjure your heresies,’ said the judge, ‘and disclose to us the hiding-place of your pastor, or you will be burnt alive.’ The councillors, alternately threatened and flattered, gave way. Constables (_sbirri_) descended into the mines and seized the minister. The rector was burnt at Altsol, August 22; but the pastor was taken to a greater distance, near the Castle of Dobrony. His keepers having halted near this building, in the midst of grand and solemn scenery, the priests called upon their prisoner to forswear his faith. Nicolaï—this was the name of the Hungarian martyr—remaining unmoved, was killed with a sabre-stroke and his body was thrown into the flames.[549] [Sidenote: Edict Of Ferdinand.] While these things were taking place under the sceptre of Zapolya, his rival Ferdinand issued at Buda, August 20, 1527, an edict for persecution.[550] Imprisonment, banishment, confiscation, death by drowning, sword, or fire, were decreed against heretics, and any town which did not execute this royal ordinance was to be deprived of all its privileges.[551] A sky loaded with clouds foreboded to Hungary days of suffering, of blood, and of mourning. Footnote 541: _Historia Critica Ungariæ_, xix. p. 89. Footnote 542: ‘Sarei contento che quel regno si perdesse,’ &c.—_Relazione del Signor d’Orio_, Dec. 1523. Ranke, _Deutsch. Geschichte_, ii. p. 407. Footnote 543: