These mental reservations, however, made many ecclesiastics and laymen too feel uneasy. They longed for deliverance: they were on the look out; they turned their eyes successively towards Ireland which had risen for the pope, and towards the Low Countries, whence an imperial fleet was to sail for the subjugation of England. Men grew excited. In the convents there were fanatical and visionary monks who, maddened by the abuses of power under which they suffered, and fired by persecution, dreamt of nothing but reaction and vengeance, and expressed their cruel wishes in daring language. One of them named Maitland, belonging to the Dominican convent in London, exclaimed presumptuously, as if he were a prophet: 'Soon I shall behold a scaffold erected.... On that scaffold will pass in turn the heads of all those who profess the new doctrine, and Cranmer will be one of them.... The king will die a violent and shameful death, and the queen will be burnt.' Being addicted to the black art, Maitland pretended to read the future by the help of Satanic beings. All were not so bold: there were the timid and fearful. Several monks of Sion House, despairing of the papacy, were making preparations to escape and hide themselves in some wilderness or foreign cloister. 'If we succeed,' they said, 'we shall be heard of no more, and nobody will know where we are.' This being told to Bedell, Cromwell's agent, he was content to say: 'Let them go; the loss will not be great.' Roman-catholicism was, however, to find more honorable champions. [Sidenote: MORE REFUSES TO TAKE THE OATH.] Two men, a layman and a bishop, celebrated throughout Christendom, Fisher and Sir Thomas More, were about to present an opposition to the king which probably he had not expected. Since More had fathomed the king's intentions, and resigned the office of chancellor, he often passed whole nights without sleep, shuddering at the future which threatened him, and watering his bed with tears. He feared that he was not firm enough to brave death. 'O God!' he exclaimed during his agitated vigils, 'come and help me. I am so weak I could not endure a fillip.'[86] His children wept, his wife stormed against her husband's enemies, and he himself employed a singular mode of preparing his family for the fate that awaited him. One day, when they were all at table, a serjeant entered the room and summoned him to appear before the king's commissioners. 'Be of good cheer,' said More; 'the time is not yet come. I paid this man in order to prepare you for the calamity that hangs over you.' It was not long delayed.