Whether Mary was persuaded of Jane’s innocence on the ground that the girl was scarcely a free agent, or whether the letter which Jane wrote to her as a prisoner,[314] turned the balance in her favour, is not clear, but it is certain that the Queen’s treatment of her rival at this time was magnanimous to imprudence, as the sequel showed. As for the other delinquents, no rebellion had ever been quenched with so little effusion of blood. Far otherwise had been Henry’s reprisals after the northern rising, far other the crushing of the insurgents in Edward’s reign. Had the punishment of the rebels rested entirely with Mary, she would have signalised her advent with a full and general amnesty. The Duchess of Suffolk had thrown herself at the Queen’s feet, imploring the pardon and release of her husband, both of which she obtained immediately; but strange as it appears, it is not on record that she even attempted to plead for her daughter.[315] More stringent measures at the outset would no doubt have averted the serious disturbances of the following year, and afterwards; and the opinion of Charles V., that to punish the authors of sedition was to nip the revolution in the bud, was justified in the event. He had insisted on the execution of Northumberland and his lieutenants, but more than this he had not obtained. The people had little respect or gratitude for a clemency which they did not understand. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 287: “He (Mr. Huddleston) was highly honoured afterwards by Queen Mary, and deservedly. Such the trust she reposed in him that (when Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen) she came privately to him to Salston, and rid thence behind his servant (the better to disguise herself from discovery) to Framlingham castle. She afterwards made him (as I have heard) her privy councillor and (besides other great boons) bestowed the bigger part of Cambridge Castle (then much ruined) upon him, with the stones whereof he built his fair house in this county” (Fuller, _Worthies_, i., p. 168).] [Footnote 288: “A sketch of Hengrave Hall, Suffolk,” by Sir Henry Rookwood Gage.] [Footnote 289: Henry had confiscated the place on the attainder of the Duke of Norfolk. The Duke requested pathetically that he would be pleased to bestow it on the royal children as it was “stately gear”. Mary restored it to its rightful owner.] [Footnote 290: _Papiers d’Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, d’après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque de Besançon_, publiés sous la direction de M. Ch. Weiss, tom. iv., p. 31.] [Footnote 291: Cotton MS. Vit. F. xii., Brit. Mus. Printed in the _Chronicle of Queen Jane and Two Years of Queen Mary_, p. 110, appendix.] [Footnote 292: Holinshed, 1084.] [Footnote 293: This was so generally believed, that the Emperor told Mary that she ought to put to death all the conspirators who had any hand in the late King’s death (Renard _apud_ Griffet, p. 11).] [Footnote 294: _Papiers d’Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle_, p. 39.]