In order to avoid difficulty, and to secure a swift and convenient resolution, it was proposed that both at Oxford and Cambridge the universities should be represented by a committee composed of the heads of houses, the proctors, and the graduates in divinity and law: that this committee should agree upon a form of a reply; and that the university seal should then be affixed without further discussion. This proposition was plausible as well as prudent, for it might be supposed reasonably that young half-educated students were incapable of forming a judgment on an intricate point of law; and to admit their votes was equivalent to allowing judgment to be given by party feeling. The masters who were to be thus excluded refused however to entertain this view of their incapacity. The question whether the committee should be appointed was referred to convocation, where, having the advantage of numbers, they coerced the entire proceedings; and some of them "expressing themselves in a very forward manner" to the royal commissioners,[276] and the heads of houses being embarrassed, and not well knowing what to do, the king found it necessary again to interpose. He was unwilling, as he said, to violate the constitution of the university by open interference, "considering it to exist under grant and charter from the crown as a body politic, in the ruling whereof in things to be done in the name of the whole, the number of private suffrages doth prevail." "He was loth, too," he added, "to show his displeasure, whereof he had so great cause ministered unto him, unto the whole in general, whereas the fault perchance consisted and remained in light and wilful heads," and he trusted that it might suffice if the masters of the colleges used their private influence and authority[277] in overcoming the opposition. For the effecting of this purpose, however, and in order to lend weight to their persuasion, he assisted the convocation towards a conclusion with the following characteristic missive:-- "To our trusty and well-beloved the heads of houses, doctors, and proctors of our University of Oxford: