In accordance with the prescriptions of the Concordat the Holy Father began at once the execution of that article which required the resignation of the various sees by their actual or rightful incumbents. The brief dispatched by the Pope to all the bishops of France, whether resident in that country or living in foreign lands, necessitated that an answer be received within ten days. Fourteen prelates residing in London declared, on September 27th, that they could not consent for the present to his demands, at least without having been heard. Twenty-six bishops residing in Germany answered in the same terms on October 28th. On January 21st the bishops who had taken refuge in England addressed to the Holy Father a new refusal protesting "against the attempts which had been made or which might be made against the rights of the Most Christian King, their Sovereign Lord, rights which the laws of the Church commanded the first among the Pontiffs to respect religiously, and the defence of which was for the French bishops a duty rendered sacred by their oaths of fidelity from which no power could release them, and whose violation would be a criminal act." Some hesitation was likewise manifested by the constitutional bishops resident in France, a hesitation, however, which under the tactful management of Cardinal Caprara, the new Legate a Latere at Paris, was finally overcome. The Holy Father, after waiting patiently for several months for a favorable answer to his demands, resolved at length to act notwithstanding all protestations. In the Bull, _Qui Christi Domini_, he declared that he derogated to the consent of the bishops who had refused to sign their resignation, he interdicted in them every act of jurisdiction, he abolished the old dioceses existing in France, and erected sixty new sees in their place.