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It is probable that on his return to Cologne, having given an account of his mission, he started with the other delegates for Worms. Writing to the coadjutor Adolf, on 6th December, Billick says that at Mainz they heard that all the roads were occupied by the enemy.
The two champions were personally not unknown to each other, as they had met at the Diets of Worms and Regensburg, where Billick had made a point of studying the Strassburg heresiarch carefully.
* Monsignanus, Bullarium, ii. 59 c, 47 b. At this assembly, the representatives of the Lower Rhine Province were Theodoric of Gouda, Martin Cuperus, and Eberhard Billick.
Billick went on to complain bitterly that the sentence against the archbishop announced by the papal nuncio, Verallo, as imminent, had not yet been passed. "Every postponement of the imperial mandate," he wrote, "means a weakening of our cause and a strengthening of that of our opponents.
By a special brief of 3rd July, Hermann's coadjutor, Adolf von Schauenburg, was made administrator of the archdiocese, and Gropper and Billick were appointed to examine the deposed archbishop with regard to his attitude towards the Catholic religion.
In 1541, Eberhard Billick was appointed provincial, and almost immediately began to visit the houses in his jurisdiction. At Cologne he found a condition of things sufficient to make the boldest reformer quail.
The sentiments thus appealed to may not have been of the loftiest, but it must be remembered that the reform was to be gradual, and higher motives could be suggested when the subject was ready for them. * Dr. Alois Postina, Der Karmelit Eberhard Billick. Ein Lebensbild aus dem 16, Jahrhundert, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1901, p. 25.
Billick appealed to the Emperor, who had taken all the Carmelite convents in Lower Germany under his protection; but the Emperor's goodwill surpassed his power to help, the whole of his money and energy being needed to oppose the Turks, the French, and the Duke of Cleves. The greatest danger and difficulty lay in the behaviour of Count Hermann of Wied, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne.
Neither he nor his advisers could hit on a safe mode of continuing the journey, as it was known that separate parties of defeated Schmalkaldians were making their retreat good by various roads back to the Rhine. To add to his alarm and embarrassment Billick discovered that his horse had been rendered useless by a mysterious wound, so that he had reason to think he had been betrayed.
At Speyer he fell in with a nobleman belonging to the imperial army on his way back to the camp, and Billick joined him, without however revealing his name or his mission, so necessary was it to regard every stranger as a possible enemy.
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