page xxiv

About the close of the year 1735, however, the old methods of conversion were revived, and in the following year a number of families fled into Saxony, whence one family came to Pennsylvania the same year, and four others in 1737. Again there was anxiety about the loss of subjects, and, whether in consequence of representations by the local governments or of other promptings, an imperial order was issued temporarily suspending the exercise of the extraordinary powers of the missionaries, and directing a searching investigation of their conduct; and again there was comparative exemption from persecution.

But whatever steadiness of purpose Charles VI. manifested in the general administration of the affairs of the empire, his conduct towards the Schwenkfelders had always been characterized by fickleness. Each spasmodic exhibition of a tolerant disposition had been followed by a more intolerant decree from the Imperial Court, and it was too late now when, nearing the end of his career, he was engaged in securing guarantees of the inviolability, after his death, of the Pragmatic Sanction, to expect more firmness in his good intentions towards this people than he had before shown. The next spring a decree was published to the effect that the "Schwenkfelder heresy" must be trodden out, and its adherents coerced into the Catholic Church within one year. But it was a vain decree. The hour of final deliverance and, in some measure, of retribution, was approaching. Within the year appointed for the extermination of the Schwenkfelders Charles had paid the debt of nature, and Frederick the Great had vindicated his better title to Silesia, under the agreement of mutual succession made two centuries before between his ancestor, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Duke of Liegnitz, and had proclaimed religious freedom in the long-misgoverned principalities.