The exhortations of the "father confessor" were not without some measure of success, several of the Carthusians being induced to alter their opinions as to the king’s demands. The seal of doom, however, was fixed on the order by the passing of the Act which called upon its members to renounce the Pope and acknowledge the royal supremacy.(1180) Fisher and More denied the king’s title of Supreme Head of the Church, and were committed to the Tower. At this crisis there came to London two priors of Carthusian houses established, one in Nottinghamshire and the other in Lincolnshire. They came to talk over the state of affairs with Houghton. An interview with Cromwell, recently appointed vicar-general or king’s vicegerent in matters ecclesiastical, was resolved on. The king might possibly be prevailed upon to make some abatement in his demands. Cromwell, however, no sooner discovered the object of their visit than he committed them to the Tower as rebels and would-be traitors. As they still refused to acknowledge the king’s supremacy in the Church, in spite of all efforts of persuasion, they were brought to trial, together with Father Reynolds of Sion, on a charge of treason. A verdict of guilty was, after some hesitation on the part of the jury, found against them, and they were executed at Tyburn (4 May, 1535), glorying in the cause for which they were held worthy to suffer death. Houghton’s arm was suspended over the gateway of the London Charterhouse, in the fond hope that the rest of the brethren might be awed into submission. This atrocious act of barbarism had, however, precisely the opposite effect to that desired. The monks were more resolute than ever not to submit, and not even a personal visit of Henry himself could turn them from their purpose.(1181) Three of them were thereupon committed to prison, where they were compelled to stand in an upright position for thirteen days, chained from their necks to their arms and with their legs fettered.(1182) They were afterwards brought to trial on a charge of treason, convicted and executed (19 June). The fate of the remaining monks is soon told. In May, 1537, the royal commissioners once more attended at the Charterhouse, when they found the majority of its inmates prepared to take the oath prescribed. Ten of them, however, still refused, and were committed to Newgate and there left to be "dispatched by the hand of God," in other words to meet a painful and lingering death from fever and starvation. The following month the remnant of the community made their submission, and the London Charterhouse, as a monastic institution, ceased to exist. (M620)