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Old Church Lore
Preface
The welcome reception from the public and the press accorded to my volume entitled “Curiosities of the Church,” has induced me to issue another work on similar lines. Like that book, this one shows how closely the Church in bygone times was linked with the national and social life of the people.
An attempt has been made to blend instruction and entertainment, and present out-of-the-way facts drawn from unpublished documents and other sources, which do not usually come under the notice of the reader.
Hull Literary Club,
August 1st, 1891.
The Right of Sanctuary
A place where criminals and political offenders could find refuge was called a Sanctuary. It is generally agreed that in this country the privilege of sanctuary was instituted on the recognition of Christianity. From an early time down to the days of Henry VIII., fugitives were safe for certain periods in all the churches and churchyards of the land.
The origin of the usage is extremely remote. Most probably it existed among the Israelites before Moses gave directions for the establishment of cities of refuge, when the children of Israel settled in the Promised Land. The Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and American Indians had their places of refuge.
In England the laws respecting this subject are both numerous and curious. A code of laws made in the year 693 by Ina, King of the West Saxons, contains a recognition of the right of sanctuary. It is therein stated that, if any one accused of a capital offence takes refuge in a church, his life shall be spared, but the criminal is directed to make compensation for his crime. If the guilty one deserved stripes, they were not to be inflicted. According to Alfred the Great’s laws of the year 887, those guilty of slight offences were allowed to flee to a church, and there remain for three nights. Thus time was given them to compound for their misdemeanours, or to make suitable provision for their safety. Stringent measures were taken to guard against the violation of the sanctuary. The person who violated the sanctuary and inflicted bonds, blows, or wounds upon the refugee, had to pay the price set upon his life, and to the officiating ministers of the church, one hundred and twenty shillings, which was a large sum in those days. “If a criminal,” says the Rev. J. R. Boyle, F.S.A., in a carefully prepared paper on this theme, “fled to a church, no one should drag him thence within the space of seven days, if he could live so long without food, and had not attempted to force his way out. If the clergy had occasion to hold service in the church whilst the refugee was there, they might keep him in some house which had no more doors than the church had.”
The law of sanctuary was clearly defined in the year 1070 by William the Conqueror. The privilege of sanctuary was only temporary, and during the time of sanctuary, which was within forty days, the refugee might, if able, come to an agreement with his adversaries. If he failed to compound for his crime, he had to appear before the coroner, clothed in sackcloth, confess his crime, and abjure the realm. In an act passed in the year 1529, in the reign of Henry VIII., it is directed that “immediately after his confession, and before his abjuration, he was to be branded by the coroner with a hot iron upon the brawn of the thumb of his right hand with the sign of the letter A, to the intent he might be the better known among the king’s subjects to have abjured.” If the offender failed to make a confession of his crime to the coroner within forty days, and remained in the sanctuary, any one found furnishing him with food was regarded as guilty of felony.
Sir William Rastall, who was Chief-Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, in his “Collection of Statutes now in force,” London, 1594, supplies a copy of the form of confession and abjuration usually employed. It is as follows: —
“This hear thou, Sir Coroner, that I … of ........... am a ......... and because I have done such evils in this land, I do abjure the land of our lord the King, and shall haste me towards the port of [mentioning a port named by the coroner], and that I shall not go out of the highway, and if I do, I will that I be taken as a robber and a felon of our lord the King, and that at such place I will diligently seek for passage, and that I will tarry there but one flood and ebb, if I can have passage; and unless I can have it in such a place, I will go every day into the seas up to my knees assaying to pass over, and unless I can do this within forty days, I will put myself again into the church as a robber and a felon of our lord the King, so God me help and His holy judgment.”
The constables of the parishes through which the culprit passed conducted him over their highways to the port from whence he had to embark. We gather from “England in the Fifteenth Century,” by the Rev. W. Denton, M.A., that sanctuary men sent from London to Dover “frequently broke their promise to cross the Channel, betook themselves to the forest, and joined the bands of thieves who made the greenwood of the Weald of Kent their home.”
In the reign of Henry VIII. several acts were passed dealing with this subject. The reason why one of the acts was passed was the loss of the strength of the country by persons taking sanctuary and abjuring the realm, teaching foreigners archery, and also of disclosing the secrets of the realm. To prevent such loss, “it was enacted that every person abjuring was to repair to some sanctuary within the realm, which himself should choose, and there remain during his natural life; and to be sworn before the coroner upon his abjuration so to do.” If a sanctuary man left his retreat without being granted his discharge by the King’s pardon, he ran the risk of being tried for his original crime, and was prohibited from the protective power of the sanctuary. It was usual, in bygone times, for men to wear swords, but when any one took sanctuary he had to give up his weapons, and only use a knife at meal times to cut his meat. The governors of the sanctuaries directed the men under protection to wear a badge or cognisance “openly upon their upper garment, of the compass, in length and breadth, of ten inches,” under pain of forfeiting all the privileges of sanctuary. If they left their lodgings between sunset and sunrise it was at the peril of losing all right of protection. In the same reign, it was decreed that persons guilty of high treason, and pirates, should be excluded from the right of sanctuary. The most important measure bearing on this subject, passed in 1540, clearly indicates the adverse attitude assumed by Henry VIII. towards the privilege of sanctuary. He took away the rights from all places except parish churches and their churchyards, cathedrals, hospitals, and the sanctuaries at Wells, Westminster, Manchester, Northampton, Norwich, York, Derby, and Launceston. A year later, Chester was substituted for Manchester. It is stated that the inhabitants of Manchester were much troubled by the influx of dissolute persons seeking sanctuary. They intimated to Parliament that the refugees injured their trade, and further, that as they had “no mayor, sheriff, or bailiff, no walls, and no gaol for the confinement of offenders,” they prayed to have the privilege withdrawn. In the statute of 1540, the privilege of sanctuary was “abolished in cases of wilful murder, rape, burglary, highway robbery, or wilful burning of a house or barn containing corn.” Not more than twenty persons were to be sheltered in a sanctuary at one time.
An act passed in 1624, in the reign of James I., nominally abolished all privileges of sanctuary in England. It did not completely close all sanctuaries, for in them remained lawless characters, who had long been there, and whom it would not be deemed prudent to have at large. It is asserted that the sanctuary regulations were frequently broken, and that refugees committed robberies and other crimes in the immediate neighbourhood of their sanctuaries.
In the case of debtors, sanctuaries in a modified form existed down to the reign of William III., when, in the year 1697, an Act of Parliament abolished them.
English history furnishes many instances of sanctuary laws being disregarded. A familiar example is that of four Lancastrian knights flying from the battlefield of Tewkesbury, in 1471, and taking refuge in a church not far distant from the place. Edward, sword in hand, was about to follow them, and violate the sanctuary, but the priest who was celebrating mass refused to permit him to enter, until he agreed to
