The inmates of the London Charterhouse, who might well have been left to enjoy their quiet seclusion from the world, were startled by a visit from the king’s commissioners calling upon them to take the oath. The manner of their reception by John Houghton, the prior, and his brethren and subsequent proceedings are graphically described by Maurice Chauncy,(1177) one of the inmates, who was more compliant than his brethren to the king’s wishes, and thereby saved his life. The prior and Humphrey Middlemore, the procurator of the convent, were committed to the Tower for counselling opposition to the commissioners. There they were visited by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London, who persuaded them at last that the question of the succession was not a cause in which to sacrifice their lives for conscience sake. The result was that after a while Houghton and his companion declared their willingness to submit. On the 29th May the commissioners received oaths of fealty from Prior Houghton and five other monks, and on the 6th June Bishop Lee and Sir Thomas Kitson, one of the sheriffs, received similar oaths from a number of priests, professed monks and lay brethren or _conversi_ belonging to the house.(1178) The oaths of obedience to the Act were given under reservation "so far as the law of God permitted," and for a time the monks were left in comparative quiet, some few of them, of whom Cromwell entertained the most hope of submission, being sent, by his direction, to the convent of Sion.(1179) (M618) (M619)