In the month of August he arrived at Stegeborg, which was now besieged by his general, Arwid the West-Goth, who had recently repulsed with great bravery Severin Norby's attempt to relieve the castle, and had even begun to take homage for Gustavus from the people of his province, although in this he experienced difficulties. The East-Goths declared that they had been so chastised for their attack on the Bishop's castle at Linkoping the preceding year that they no longer dared to provoke either King Christian or Bishop Hans Brask. The personal presence of Gustavus decided the waverers, and even the Bishop received him as a friend, because he would otherwise have stood in danger of a hostile visitation. Gustavus now convoked a diet of barons at Vadstena, which was attended by seventy Swedish gentlemen of noble family and by many other persons of all classes in Gothland. These made him a tender of the crown, which he refused to accept. On August 24th, therefore, they swore fealty and obedience to him as administrator of the kingdom--"in like manner," add the chronicles, "as had formerly been done in Upland"; whence they seem to have assumed that he had already been acknowledged as such in Upper Sweden, here called Upland, as we often find it in the chronicles of the Middle Age. This was the first public declaration of the nobility in favor of Gustavus and his cause; although the greatest barons in this division of the kingdom, such as Nils Boson (Grip), Holger Carlson (Gere), and Thure Jenson (Roos) in West-Gothland, all three councillors of state, were still in arms for Christian. That the first-named nobleman joined the party of Gustavus before the end of the year we know from his letter of thanks for a fief of which he received the investure. Both the latter were proclaimed in 1523 to be enemies of the realm, as also was the archbishop Gustavus Trolle. He had repaired to Denmark two years before, in order to obtain, by his personal instances with the King, the often-promised relief for the besieged garrison of Stockholm, but was received with coldness and reproaches.