Their demand for “the execution of laws” was directed particularly against the special privileges and immunities, real or pretended, of the clergy.[476] Beginning with the Diet of 1511,[477] both the secular and the regular clergy were repeatedly called upon by the diets of the sixteenth century to justify their specially privileged status and their evasion of public responsibilities and burdens by presenting their charters for examination, until at last they were forced to comply with this demand in part at least.[478] The continued insistence on the part of the nobility on the clergy’s participation in public burdens resulted finally in the imposition by the Diet of 1563 of a regular tax on episcopal property and tithes.[479] In the struggle regarding ecclesiastical jurisdiction the nobility appealed to its privileges of 1422, 1433, 1454, and the Constitution of 1505, demanding the annulment of all royal edicts against heresy as unconstitutional, together with ecclesiastical jurisdiction in matters involving the nobility’s constitutional rights to life and property. As a result of this appeal and demand the king issued instructions to the starostas in 1563 to respect the constitutional rights of the nobility. By this act the royal edicts against heresy and episcopal jurisdiction, whether in cases of heresy or of refusal to pay tithes, became invalidated and rendered of no effect.[480] Thus, we see that the conflict between the Polish nobility and the ecclesiastical authorities in the sixteenth century, resulting in the former’s extensive revolt from the established church, was due mainly to the wealth of the Polish clergy, their immunities from public burdens, and their abuse of episcopal jurisdiction; for these not only increased the burdens of the Polish nobility, but also seriously menaced its social and economic status. Whatever particular form this conflict assumed, its underlying motives were essentially economic and social rather than religious or even purely political. [355] Guaranteeing to compensate the szlachta for their participation in foreign expeditions and for injuries sustained in them, Louis of Hungary simply confirmed and further enlarged a right which had been previously granted by Casimir the Great by the Statute of Wiślice of 1347, where we read: “Sed extra Regni metas nobis servire non sunt obligati, nisi ipsis satis competens satisfactio per nos impendatur, vel per nos specialiter fuerint petiti et rogati ad hoc” (Vol. leg., vol. i, fol. 44). [356] Ibid., fol. 57. [357] Sokołowski, vol. i, p. 295.