possible, banishment was more perilous
than pardon.

[Sidenote: Henry condescends to explanation.]

[Sidenote: His message to Francis.]

[Sidenote: He had made his laws on good and substantial grounds,]

But the indignation was so general and so serious, that Henry thought it
well to offer an explanation of his conduct, both at home and abroad.
With his own people he communicated through the lay authorities, not
choosing to trust himself on this occasion to the clergy. The
magistrates at the quarter sessions were directed "to declare to the
people the treasons committed by the late Bishop of Rochester and Sir
Thomas More; who thereby, and by divers secret practices, of their
malicious minds intended to seminate, engender, and breed a most
mischievous and seditious opinion, not only to their own confusion, but
also of divers others, who have lately suffered execution according to
their demerits."[467] To Francis, Cromwell instructed Gardiner, who was
ambassador in Paris, to reply very haughtily. The English government, he
said had acted on clear proof of treason; treason so manifest, and
tending so clearly to the total destruction of the commonwealth of the
realm, that the condemned persons "were well worthy, if they had a
thousand lives, to have suffered ten times a more terrible death and
execution than any of them did suffer." The laws which the king had made
were "not without substantial grounds;" but had been passed "by great
and mature advice, counsel, and deliberation of the whole policy of the
realm, and" were "indeed no new laws, but of great antiquity, now
renovate and renewed in respect to the common weal of the same realm."

[Sidenote: And is much surprised that he should be advised to banish his
traitors, giving them increased opportunity to injure him.]

With respect to the letter of the King of France, Gardiner was to say,
it was "not a little to his Highness's marvel that the French king would
ever counsel or advise him, if in case hereafter any such like offenders
should happen to be in the realm, that he should rather banish them,
than in such wise execute them, ... supposing it to be neither the
office of a friend nor a brother, that he would counsel the King's
Highness to banish his traitors into strange parts, where they might
have good occasion, time, place, and opportunity to work their feats of
treason and conspiracy the better against the king and this his realm.
In which part," concluded C