"a solemn Convocation was held in S. Mary's Chancel concerning the business forthwith to be taken in hand; which being concluded all the Doctors and Masters went in a solemn procession to Carfax and thence to Christ Church, where they heard Divine service, and so they went to dinner;[33] afterwards they with some others, in number thirty-three, that were to dispute with the Bishops, met in Our Lady's Chapel on the North side of S. Mary's Church, and thence going into the Chancel, placed themselves in a semi-circle by the High Altar." To support the platform where they sat the finials of the stalls are said to have been then levelled. "Soon after was brought in Cranmer (with a great number of rusty billmen), then Ridley, and last of all Latimer, to subscribe to certain articles then proposed. They all denied them." On Monday, the 16th April, the Vice-Chancellor and proctors met at Exeter College and thence went to the Divinity School, there to dispute with the bishops on the nature of the Eucharist. The Oxford and Cambridge doctors took their places, and the Moderator of the schools presided in his lofty chair. Cranmer was brought in and set opposite to the latter in the respondent's place. By his side was the mayor of the city, in whose charge he was. Next day it was Ridley's turn, and on the third Latimer's. So the solemn farce of the disputations, punctuated by "opprobrious checks and reviling taunts," was gone through; the bishops were pronounced no members of the Church, Cranmer was returned to Bocardo, Ridley taken to the sheriff's house and Latimer to the bailiff's. The judicial sentence followed the academical judgment. In September 1555 a commission was sent down from London, and sat in the Divinity School. The two bishops had looked death steadily in the face for two years, expecting it every day or hour. It was now come. Ridley was urged to recant, but this he firmly refused to do or to acknowledge by word or gesture "the usurped supremacy of Rome." His cap, which he refused to remove at the mention of the Cardinals and the Pope, was forcibly taken off by a beadle. Latimer when examined was equally firm. He appeared "with a kerchief on his head and upon it a night cap or two and a great cap such as townsmen use, with two broad flaps to button under the chin, wearing an old threadbare Bristol frieze gown, girded to his body with a penny leather girdle, at the which hanged by a long string of leather his Testament and his spectacles without a case, depending about his neck upon his breast." Bread was bread, the aged bishop boldly declared when asked for his views on transubstantiation, and wine was wine; there was a change in the Sacrament it was true, but the change was not in the nature but the dignity.