However, there came a setback. Stevens had barely been abbot of Beaulieu for a year when a crisis occurred which enabled to the government to put pressure on him to surrender his monastery, were this needed, and perhaps to menace a worse fate. In September 1537 James Manzi (or Mangii), a Florentine on the run from the government for unspecified offences that might be construed as treason, took sanctuary at the abbey. Cromwell sent agents to arrest him, but the abbot was absent when they arrived and in the meanwhile the fugitive escaped. The abbot conducted an investigation into the affair and Manzi was soon recaptured, but suspicion remained that he had been somehow involved in the escape in the spirit of the old laws of sanctuary (thus potentially incurring serious criminal charges) and Stevens was obliged to throw himself on the mercy of Cromwell and Wriothesley.