The most violent of these acts took place in what became a second phase of the Pilgrimage in winter 1537, when far fewer of the northern governing class were involved in disturbances and therefore less able to moderate them. One feature of the main outbreaks in the autumn was that many northern people directly associated with Cromwell were not treated in this extreme fashion. Once identified, they were ritually humiliated, but then given a chance to be reintegrated into the newly fashioned society of the North by oath-taking. It is fortunate for our understanding of events that most of them
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