The flight of the priests and monks gave the magistrates the opportunity of listening to the preaching of Christian Ketelhot and his colleagues. In a short while the council's eyes were opened to the true light, and in accord with the Forty-Eight and the burghers themselves, they assigned the churches to the evangelical preachers; the monastery, that is, the supreme direction of all the ministers and servitors of the church being confided to Ketelhot, who exercised it for twenty-three years, in fact, up to the day of his death. Canons and vicars had taken the precaution to collect all the specie, valuables and title deeds, amounting to considerable sums; they entrusted to certain councillors of Greifswald chests and lockers filled with chalices, rich chasubles and various holy vessels. They occasionally converted these into money and handed to the debtors certain annuities at half-price. Consequently, the hospitals, churches, and pious foundations lost both their capital and their income. A long time after these events the sons of my relative, Christian Schwartz, dispatched to me for restitution to the council of Stralsund, a sailor's locker which had stood for forty years under their father's bed. It contained velvet chasubles embroidered with silver and pearls, in addition to a couple of silver crucifixes. Though their rules forbade the monks of St. John to touch coined metal, the father custodian did not scruple to carry away with him all that the convent held in clinking coin and precious objects.