Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from
the hereditary mildness and clemency of my parents,
I do now forgive you, deliver you from all fines and
imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty,
and every way make you as frank and free as ever you
were before. Moreover, at your going out of
the gate, you shall have every one of you three months’
pay to bring you home into your houses and families,
and shall have a safe convoy of six hundred cuirassiers
and eight thousand foot under the conduct of Alexander,
esquire of my body, that the clubmen of the country
may not do you any injury. God be with you!
I am sorry from my heart that Picrochole is not here;
for I would have given him to understand that this
war was undertaken against my will and without any
hope to increase either my goods or renown.
But seeing he is lost, and that no man can tell where
nor how he went away, it is my will that his kingdom
remain entire to his son; who, because he is too young,
he not being yet full five years old, shall be brought
up and instructed by the ancient princes and learned
men of the kingdom. And because a realm thus
desolate may easily come to ruin, if the covetousness
and avarice of those who by their places are obliged
to administer justice in it be not curbed and restrained,
I ordain and will have it so, that Ponocrates be overseer
and superintendent above all his governors, with whatever
power and authority is requisite thereto, and that
he be continually with the child until he find him
able and capable to rule and govern by himself.
Now I must tell you, that you are to understand how
a too feeble and dissolute facility in pardoning evildoers
giveth them occasion to commit wickedness afterwards
more readily, upon this pernicious confidence of receiving
favour. I consider that Moses, the meekest man
that was in his time upon the earth, did severely
punish the mutinous and seditious people of Israel.
I consider likewise that Julius Caesar, who was so
gracious an emperor that Cicero said of him that his
fortune had nothing more excellent than that he could,
and his virtue nothing better than that he would always
save and pardon every man—he, notwithstanding
all this, did in certain places most rigorously punish
the authors of rebellion. After the example
of these good men, it is my will and pleasure that
you deliver over unto me before you depart hence,
first, that fine fellow Marquet, who was the prime
cause, origin, and groundwork of this war by his vain
presumption and overweening; secondly, his fellow
cake-bakers, who were neglective in checking and reprehending
his idle hairbrained humour in the instant time; and
lastly, all the councillors, captains, officers, and
domestics of Picrochole, who had been incendiaries
or fomenters of the war by provoking, praising, or
counselling him to come out of his limits thus to trouble
us.
