Then a Council of Representatives from all classes of the community was chosen to manage the affairs of State while the throne was vacant. And, if there had been anything of hesitation and compromise in the form of their decree, there was no sign of such feeling in their answer to the envoys whom Sigismund had sent to assert his claim to the throne. They drew up a long list of their reasons for rejecting him as king. The first grounds of complaint were the deaths of Hus, Jerom, and Krasa, and the encouragement which Sigismund had given to the Crusaders against Bohemia. They then dwelt on his surrender of Brandenburg without the consent of the Assembly; and they wound up their indictment by denouncing his rejection of the Four Articles. Sigismund answered this attack by again repudiating any sanction on his part to the deaths of Hus and Jerom; by declaring himself perfectly ready to hear discussions on the Four Articles; and, finally, by taunting the Utraquists with their burning of priests and churches. But, although a want of confidence in Sigismund might bind together for a time the various sections of the Utraquist party; yet, on the other hand, the intense distrust which the treachery of C̆enĕk and the other nobles had caused, could not be removed by this superficial appearance of reconciliation. John of Z̆elív, though he had admitted the nobles to a kind of absolution, was foremost in mistrusting the repentance which had been accompanied with so much humiliation. A sudden invasion of Bohemia by the Silesians produced a new cause of distrust; for the nobles were suspected of having been very remiss in their resistance of the invaders. This brought to a head the suspicions which had originally been grounded on points of doctrinal difference; and the sterner members of the Utraquist clergy declared that they had no adequate security for the genuineness of the conversion of the nobles. John of Z̆elív followed up this attack by demanding the removal of all the clergy who adhered to the old ritual, and who would not sing in Bohemian. The Town Councils consented to the change, and John succeeded in thrusting into the vacant preacherships some supporters even of those doctrines which had been condemned by both sections of the Utraquist party.