Since, from _siththan_, SAX.
But, fair Fidessa, _sithens_ fortune's guile,
Or enimies power hath now captiv'd thee.
SPENS. _Faerie Queene_, I., IV., 57.]
it conteined certaine articles against equitie and reason. Whereupon he
appealed vnto the Bishop of Rome, vnto the Emperor, vnto the princes and
electors of Germany, and preuailed with them so farre forth, that there was
a day of hearing appointed at Posna in Polonia. And the Legates of both
parts meeting heard complaints and excuses, and dispatched no other
businesse. In the meane time Prince Frederick deceased in the tenth yeere
of his gouernment. The 34. Master was Albertus marques of Brandenburg,
[Footnote: Albrecht of Anspach and Baireuth, a scion of the Hohenzollerns.
He was a man of will and capacity, who reinvigorated the order of the
Teuton knights by renouncing Roman Catholicism and embracing Lutheranism,
while he consolidated its influence by erecting Prussia into a Duchy, whose
crown he placed on his own brow in 1525. After a prosperous reign he died
in 1550, and his son, having lost his reason, the elector John Sigismund of
Hohenzollern obtained the ducal crown in right of his wife Anna, daughter
of Duke Albert.] whom the King of Polonia did so grieuously molest with
war, and oppressed all Prussia with such extreme rigour, that the Prince of
the countrey was constrained to make a league of foure yeeres with him, and
to yeeld vnto such conditions, as turned to the vtter ouerthrowe of the
whole Order. And amongst other conditions are these which follow. Sithence
that the originall of all discorde betweene Polonia and the order doeth
from hence arise, for that hitherto in Prussia, no lawfull heyre and
successor hath borne rule and authority, but diuers and sundry haue had the
gouernment thereof, by whose meanes the nations haue bene prouoked one
against another, much Christian blood hath bin shed, the lands and
inhabitants grieuously spoiled, and many widowes and Orphans made: the
Popes, Emperors, and Princes being often solicited for the establishing of