Pope Alexander III issued a bull on 15 September 1176 approving the plan but specifying that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of London, Exeter and Worcester were to visit the convent and notify the nuns of the need to cooperate. Any nun who declined to join the new Order was to be transferred to another monastery and treated well. The new regime was then to be introduced and when the commission of bishops decided the moment had come, the abbess and a party of nuns from Fontevraud Abbey were to come to complete the handover.