Note 270 — Chapter XIV
Reading edition
A general amnesty was proclaimed immediately after. “The notable unkindness of the people,” Norfolk said, “had been able to have moved his Grace to have taken such punishment on the offenders as might have been terrible for all men to have thought on that should hereafter have only heard the names of sedition and rebellion.
“Yet the king’s most royal Majesty, of his most tender pity and great desire that he hath rather to preserve you from the stroke of justice imminent upon your deserts, than to put you to the extremity of the same, trusting and supposing that the punishment of a few offenders in respect of the multitude, which have suffered only for an example to others to avoid the like attemptations, will be sufficient for ever to make all you and your posterities to eschew semblable offences, of his inestimable goodness and pity is content by this general proclamation to give and grant to you all, every of you, his general and free pardon.”—Rolls House MS. A 2, 28; State Papers, Vol. I. p. 558.