Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow, a personage of great consideration, a clever spokesman, and of a firm and generous disposition, was a member of the council for seventeen years. Duke Bogislaw, who fully appreciated his work, took him to the conference at Nuremberg. The journey enabled the burgomaster to hear the gospel preached in its purity, and to become aware of the fatal error of papism. At Wittemberg he heard Luther preach. As a consequence, he was the first to proclaim the wholesome doctrine in open council, though the opposition of that body prevented him from supporting the propagators of the true faith when they kept within reasonable limits. He interposed between the council, the princes, and the exalted personages of the land, who were still wedded to papism, and Rolof Moller, the Forty-Eight, and their adherents who wished to carry things with too high a hand. Smiterlow told the council to show themselves less unbending with the burghers in all just and reasonable things. On the other hand, he exhorted the citizens to show more deference to the magistrates, giving the former the assurance that the preachers should not be molested, and that the gospel should not be hampered in its course. Unfortunately, his efforts failed on both sides. Then the crisis occurred. The ringleaders--among the most turbulent, Franz Wessel, L. Vischer, Bartholomäi Buchow, Hermann Meyer and Nicholas Rode lifted Rolof Moller from his fishmonger's bench--took him to the Town House, and made him take his seat in the burgomaster's chair.[10] The council was compelled to accept Rolof and Christopher Lorbeer as burgomasters, and eight of the citizens as councillors. In order to save their heads, the magistrates found themselves compelled to share with their sworn enemies both the small bench of the four burgomasters and the larger bench of twenty-four councillors. As for Smiterlow, his was the fate of those who interfere between two contending parties, the peacemakers invariably coming to grief like the iron between the anvil and the hammer. When Rolof Moller entered the burgomaster's pew Smiterlow left it, and inasmuch as his consummate experience foretold him of his danger he came to Greifswald with his two sons to ask my mother's hospitality.[11] The tolerance shown at this conjuncture by the young princes George and Barnim was due to two reasons. In the first place they expected to get the upper hand of the city without much trouble after it became worn out with domestic dissensions. Secondly, a band of zealots, with Dr. Johannes Amandus at their head, scoured the country, especially Eastern Pomerania, inciting the people to break the images, and preaching from the pulpit the sweeping away of all refuse, princes included. In the eyes of the papists, those people and the evangelicals were but one and the same set, and as their number happened to be imposing, the princes considered it prudent to lay low.