He wouldn’t pay taxes

Kordt had a thing against authority. He thought that the wealthy should be paying the poor, not the other way around. If the duke’s grandfather was a great man and did great things, this didn’t mean that the duke wasn’t a small despicable insect. Even so, Kordt decided, the duke had no right to make his people suffer under unjust taxes. Therefore, after the census, Kordt dressed up like his old aunt, and took a wagon of silver plate and fine cloth to the church office, and told them that Kordt had died and had left everything he owned to the church. Then he again dressed up like his aunt and went up to the castle to report that Kordt had died and should be taken off the books. Kordt began to conduct his business under the table, and found it necessary to always be watching his back and to be bribing certain officials. He chafed under these strictures, and he realized that he was paying just as much or more as he would have paid in taxes but in other ways that were more onerous.