Norway. All sources remembering that day agrees on the sacred tone of the day when all people assembled in their churches for a common cause. Bells rang from 10 am, chiming for a full hour. 4,000 people assembled in the central church of Christiania. At 11 am the regent arrived, and a service was held. Then the bishop intoned the oath: "Do you swear to claim the independence of Norway, and to dare life and blood for the beloved fatherland?" Both the regent and the congregation answered accordingly. This oath was taken in maybe 75 churches that day, and again over the country the next Sunday, and further until the oath was taken in all the congregations of Norway. Carsten Anker was sent to London to negotiate recognition by the British government. Swedish authorities were canvassing border areas with pamphlets subverting the independence movement. By early March, Christian Frederick had also organized a cabinet and five government departments, though he retained all decision-making authority himself. Christian Frederick meets increasing opposition from within and abroad The Count of Wedel-Jarlsberg, the most prominent member of the Norwegian nobility, arrived in Norway on 3 March and confronted the regent, accusing him of playing a dangerous game. Christian Frederick responded by accusing Wedel-Jarlsberg of colluding with the Swedes. Returns from elections for delegates to the constitutional assembly also showed there were widespread misgivings about the independence movement. By the end of March, the opinion was openly expressed that Christian Frederick's ambition was to bring Norway back under Danish sovereignty. Before Carsten Anker arrived in the United Kingdom, the British foreign secretary Robert Stewart, reimposed the naval blockade of Norway and assured the Swedish king that the British would refrain from accepting any Norwegian claims of sovereignty. A conciliatory letter sent by Christian Frederick to the Swedish king was returned unopened. On 9 March the Swedish mission to Copenhagen demanded that Christian Frederick be disinherited from succession to the Danish throne and that European powers should go to war with Denmark unless he disassociated himself from the Norwegian independence movement. On 17 March Niels Rosenkrantz, the Danish foreign minister, responded to the Swedish demands by asserting that the Danish government in no way supported Norwegian independence, but that they could not vacate border posts they did not hold. The demand for disinheriting Christian Frederick was not addressed. In several letters to Count Hans Henrik von