At the end of Greek War of Independence, the three Great Powers formulated the London Protocol of 1829, which established an autonomous Greek state under the rule of a "Hereditary Christian Prince." Numerous candidates were considered for the vacant Greek throne, including the French Duke of Nemours, Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and Otto's uncle, Prince Karl Theodor of Bavaria. Even an Irishman named Nicholas Macdonald Sarsfield Cod'd put himself forward, claiming descent from the Byzantine Palaiologos dynasty. Ultimately, they settled on Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and in the amended London Protocol of 1830 made Greece into a fully independent Kingdom under his rule. Although initially enthusiastic, Leopold was discouraged by the gloomy picture of the country's stability painted by Ioannis Kapodistrias, Greece's governor, and so rejected the crown, concerns that would prove well-founded when Kapodistrias was assassinated a year later. In 1832 British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston convened the London conference, which offered the crown to the teenage Prince Otto, which he happily accepted. The Bavarian House of Wittelsbach had no connections to ruling dynasties of any of the Great Powers, and so was a neutral choice with which they were all satisfied. The Greeks were not consulted, but Greece was in chaos and no group or individual could claim to represent it anyway.