When it became evident that the king did not intend to carry out the wishes of the Diet of 1535, the szlachta of Great Poland instructed its deputies to the Diet of 1536-1537 to insist on “the execution of laws,” which included the matter of the church’s privileges. At this Diet the Chamber of Deputies raised, therefore, most violent protests against the abuses described, and vigorously demanded conformity to law and restoration of all illegally acquired benefices and church property. At the same time the Chamber demanded that henceforth the king appoint to abbacies and other lucrative church benefices only native Poles of noble birth, or plebeians of Polish nationality in the event that there are not enough candidates of noble birth to fill vacancies. The leaders in this movement were Raphael Leszczyński, Stanislaus Myszkowski, Nicholas Krzycki, and John Sierakowski, who later on became well-known champions of the Reformation movement.[392] Moreover, in 1538 the Diet passed a law, according to which anyone receiving anything contrary to statutory enactments by courting the favor of the Vatican was thereby ipso facto proscribed and his possessions were confiscated. By the same law all church dignitaries residing in Rome away from their appointments were recalled, and if they failed to return to the country within a specified time, they were to be deprived of their offices and banished, and were not to be permitted to enter the country.[393] But high ecclesiastical offices richly endowed were after all limited in number. If the Polish nobility was to find larger access to the landed property of the church, it had to get to it in other ways, which it did. If the secular nobles were keen in buying up village mayorships, so were the Polish clergy. In fact, they were in possession of more mayorships than the secular nobles.[394] Then, too, their landed estates were further augmented by bequests of pious persons. These things were a thorn in the flesh to the Polish nobility. It sought ways and means of preventing this constant increase of church property. As early as 1510 testamentary bequests of real estate property to the church were prohibited by statutory enactment.[395] In 1534 the szlachta at its provincial diets unanimously demanded that the General Diet restrain the clergy from buying up village mayorships, with the result that in the end a law was enacted prohibiting all transfers of estates with nobility rights and privileges to the clergy whether by gift, sale, or any other method.[396] The stormy Diet of 1536-1537 went still further, demanding the secularization of all ecclesiastical estates and the sale to the szlachta of all the newly acquired lands of the clergy.[397] Nor did the nobles stop at mere demands and legislative enactments; occasionally they took matters directly into their hands. For instance, whenever and wherever there was an opportunity to seize the land of a parish priest or a