The office of starosta had degenerated into a sinecure, while the administration of the lands, which was not subject to any verification, afforded endless scope for venality, with the result that most of the revenue went not to the crown but into the pocket of the incumbent. The starosties were therefore highly sought-after; their holders could increase their revenue without any extra effort or outlay of funds and at the same time enjoy the prestige and power of the office. Influential families began to collect them, with the result that a magnate might hold up to half a dozen important starosties, and a number of other royal estates, and his family would be understandably loath to give them up on his death. Although the lands were supposed to revert to the crown, successive kings found it increasingly difficult not to award them to the son of the deceased incumbent without alienating the whole family. To all practical purposes, the starosties were therefore becoming hereditary in the richer families.
This enraged the szlachta, since it both bolstered the position of the magnates and diminished the crown’s financial resources. Again and again the executionists clamoured for a return to due process and the repossession by the crown of multiply-held starosties. On this issue, however, the magnates in the Senate who normally supported the executionists against the Church would vote with the bishops against the executionists, and the king, who by the middle of the century relied more and more on the magnates for support, would cooperate with them. Only minimal success was achieved in 1563, when the Sejm decreed a general inspection of all accounts and inventories to catch out corrupt administrators.
The executionist movement distracted much of the zeal which might otherwise have been concentrated on religious questions. At the same time, Catholic voters elected Calvinist deputies because they were executionists, and Catholic deputies voted with the executionist Calvinists on issues such as the demand for a national Church, the abolition of ecclesiastical tribunals, and the law forcing the Church to contribute financially to defence. Even at the height of the Reformation no Pole, be he Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist or Arian, was prepared to place religious issues before constitutional and legal ones. That is why the Reformation failed in Poland. After raging and blustering in word and print for a few decades, the Protestant movement gradually burnt itself out, while the energies which had fuelled it were diverted to political matters.
The Catholic Church, which had dodged the heaviest blows and avoided confrontation, slowly went over to the offensive, as the Counter-Reformation gained strength. In Poland its progress was unsensational: no inquisition, no burnings at the stake, no anathemas, no forfeitures of property, no barring from office. It could hardly have been otherwise, given the spirit pervading Polish society and the stature of the leaders of the Counter-Reformation. The greatest of these, Cardinal Stanisław Hosius, was fundamentally opposed to violence and, referring to Mary Tudor, warned in 1571: ‘Let Poland never become like England.’
Hosius and his principal colleague, Marcin Kromer, were unusual among sixteenth-century Catholic prelates. Both had worked in the royal chancellery for the king before they went into the Church. Hosius then went on to play an important role at the Council of Trent. Kromer was a historian, and in his writings he demonstrated the unifying role the Church had played in Polish history. He preferred to argue with heretics rather than condemn them. Hosius favoured a similar approach, but he made a greater and more categorical statement on the matter of religion—something the Calvinists were unable to do. His