is not clear.[89] At the general diet held in Vadstena in January, representatives from Fredrik were present, and it was agreed that the expedition should be made as soon as the harbors opened. The quotas to be furnished by the different parts of Sweden by the first week after Easter were also fixed. The Danish envoys, it appears, made no promises except that a congress of the two realms should be held on the 14th of February to settle all matters of dispute. The passports for the Danish envoys to this convention were issued by Gustavus on the spot. They were never used, however; for just before the appointed day he received notice from the Danish Cabinet that they wished the congress to be postponed. This action caused Brask to suspect that Fredrik's sole object was to use up time. Whatever Fredrik's object, the congress could not be held without him. Gustavus therefore postponed it till the end of April, and set about raising an army for himself.[90] The first person to whom the monarch turned was Bishop Brask. It appears that there had been some dispute between the bishop and one of the hospitals in his diocese as to the tithes from certain lands. The shrewd monarch conceived the notion that the simplest mode of settling the dispute was to hand the disputed property over to the crown. He wrote, therefore, to both parties to send him at once the original documents on which they based their claims. "And meantime," he said, "we forbid you positively to collect the disputed tithes. Should you touch them, we shall be forced to take further steps. We have, indeed, been told that in the times of our fathers the crown received from the canons throughout the realm one fourth of their tithes under the name of 'the poor man's portion,' with the understanding that the money should be used to found hospitals, and over these hospitals the crown has ever since held _jus patronatus_." To this demand Brask answered that he would send the documents desired, but that the crown had never taken the tithes from the canons except by force. A few weeks later, on the 18th of February, the king wrote Brask that the expedition would start as soon as the harbors opened, and that, as Brask had been one of the promoters of the scheme, he must expect to contribute generously toward it, especially since he and his diocese, being nearest to the isle of Gotland, would be the ones most benefited by the overthrow of Norby. Brask, in his answer of March 8, repudiated the idea that the expedition was the fruit of his brain, and expressed the hope that the matter might be settled without bloodshed. "'T is never wise," he said, "to break down doors already open." Brask asserted, further, that he had never received a penny of rent from Gotland, but promised to do all he could to obtain aid from the churches of his diocese.[91]