When the inhabitants of the provinces learned that the king refused to allow them to abide by the Pacification of Ghent and that a general war, leading in its turn to serious domestic quarrels, was fought to ensure that those who had forsaken the Roman Catholic religion and would not come back to the old religious rites prevailing at the time of Charles V, would be banished or massacred in violation of the Pacification of Ghent, which they were not allowed to keep, things had come to such a pass that to ward off the complete ruin of the provinces it was necessary to take further action and to restore the peace of the inhabitants firstly by letters in which the parties promised to respect each other's religious persuasion and later by religious peace and other agreements. Therefore people who accuse the inhabitants or the States of inconstancy and almost of perjury for exceeding the limits of the Pacification of Ghent by permitting the exercise of another religion should be bitterly hated and blamed. For it was the king, the king's commanders and councillors who were the first to reject the afore-mentioned Pacification under the pretext of the Perpetual Edict and some letters as being dishonest and scandalous.