the Book of Common Prayer and in 1549 he was one of the commissioners who investigated Bishops Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Bonner. He concurred that they should be removed. John Ponet took Ridley's former position. Incumbent conservatives were uprooted and replaced with reformers. When Ridley was appointed to the see of London by letters patent on 1 April 1550, he was called the "Bishop of London and Westminster" because the Diocese of London had just re-absorbed the dissolved Diocese of Westminster. Vestments controversy (1550–3) Ridley played a major part in the vestments controversy. John Hooper, having been exiled during King Henry's reign, returned to England in 1548 from the churches in Zürich that had been reformed by Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in a highly iconoclastic fashion. When Hooper was invited to give a series of Lenten sermons before the king in February 1550, he spoke against Cranmer's 1549 ordinal whose oath mentioned "all saints" and required newly elected bishops and those attending the ordination ceremony to wear a cope and surplice. In Hooper's view, these requirements were vestiges of Judaism and Roman Catholicism, which had no biblical warrant for Christians since they were not used in the early Christian church. Summoned to answer to the Privy Council and archbishop—who were primarily concerned with Hooper's willingness to accept the royal supremacy, which was also part of the oath for newly ordained clergy—Hooper evidently made sufficient reassurances, as he was soon appointed to the bishopric of Gloucester. Hooper declined the office, however, because of the required vestments and oath by the saints. The king accepted Hooper's position, but the Privy Council did not. Called before them on 15 May 1550, a compromise was reached. Vestments were to be considered a matter of adiaphora, or Res Indifferentes ("things indifferent", as opposed to an article of faith), and Hooper could be ordained without them at his discretion, but he must allow that others could wear them. Hooper passed confirmation of the new office again before the king and council on 20 July 1550 when the issue was raised again, and Cranmer was instructed that Hooper was not to be charged "with an oath burdensome to his conscience". Cranmer assigned Ridley to perform the consecration, and Ridley refused to do anything but follow the form of the ordinal as it had been prescribed by Parliament. Ridley, it seems likely, had some particular objection to Hooper.