CHAPTER III SECURITY OF THE ROADS
These roads, thus followed in every direction by the king and the lords moving from one manor to another, by the merchants and peasants going to the fair, the market, or the staple, by sheriffs, monks and itinerant justices, by ladies in carriages and villains driving their carts, were they safe? The theorist studying the legal ordinances of the period, and the manner in which the county police and the town watch and ward were organized, might come to the conclusion that precautions were well taken for the prevention of misdeeds, and that travelling did not present more danger than it does at present. If we add, as Mr. Thorold Rogers has shown, that common carriers plied their trade between Oxford and London, Winchester, Newcastle, etc., and that the price of transport was not dear, we might be persuaded that the roads were quite safe, and we should be wrong; wrong too, if on the faith of romantic tales, we pictured to ourselves brigands in every thicket, a hanged man on {150} every branch, and robber barons at every cross-road. But accident, or the unexpected, must be taken into account.
Accident played a great part in the social life of the fourteenth century. It was the moment when modern life began, the outward brilliancy of a novel civilization had recently modified society from top to bottom, the need to be constantly on the watch had become less apparent; the moated castle with its drawbridge, battlements and loop-holes, had begun to change into a villa or a mansion, while the hut was growing into a house. Confidence was greater, but not always justified: accidents are unexpected mishaps.
More means were taken than formerly to hinder ill-doing; but numerous occurrences happened to destroy this incipient security. Society was in reality neither calm nor quite settled, and many of its members were still half savage. The term “half” may be taken literally. If a list were made of the characteristics of such or such an individual of the time, it would be found that some belonged to a refined, and some to a barbarous world. Hence these contrasts: on one side order, which it would perhaps be unjust not to consider as the normal condition; and on the other, the frequent ebullitions of the untamed nature. Let us select an example of such accidents which could take at times remarkable proportions. Here are a knight and his men at the corner of a road, waiting for a troop of merchants. The text itself of the victims’ petition gives all the details of the encounter.[175]
The facts happened in 1342. Some Lichfield merchants state to their lord, the Earl of Arundel, that on a certain Friday they sent two servants and two horses laden with “spicery and mercery,” worth forty pounds, to Stafford for the next market day. When their men “came beneath Cannock Wood” they met Sir Robert de Rideware, Knight, waiting for them, together with {151} two of his men, who seized on the servants, horses, and goods, and took them to the priory of Lappeley. Unfortunately for the knight, during the journey, one of the servants escaped.
At the priory the band found “Sir John de Oddyngesles, Esmon de Oddyngesles, and several others, knights as well as others.” It was evidently a pre-arranged affair, carefully devised; all was done according to rule; they shared “among them the aforesaid mercery and spicery, each one a portion according to his degree.” That done, the company left Lappeley and rode to the priory of Blythebury, a nuns’ priory. Sir Robert declared that they were the king’s men, quite exhausted, and begged for hospitality. But the company had obviously a suspicious appearance, and the abbess refused. Indignant at this unfriendly reception, the knights burst open the doors of the barns and lofts, gave hay and oats to their horses, and so passed the night.
But they were not the only people to have made a good use of their time. The escaped servant had followed them at a distance; when he saw they had taken up their quarters at the priory he returned with all speed to Lichfield and warned the bailiff who hastened to collect his men for the pursuit of the robbers. The latter, men of the sword, as soon as they were met, stood their ground, and a real battle took place, in which they had at first the upper hand, and wounded several of their pursuers. At length, however, they were worsted and fled; all the spices were recovered, and four of their company taken, who, without further ado, were beheaded on the spot.
Robert de Rideware was not one of the latter, and did not lose heart. He met his relative Walter de Rideware, lord of Hamstall Rideware, with some of his followers, while the bailiff was on his way back to Lichfield; all together veered around in pursuit of the bailiff. A fresh fight. This time the king’s officer was routed and fled, {152} while the highway gentlemen once more captured the spices.
What resource remained for the unhappy William and Richard, authors of the petition? Resort to justice? This they wanted to do. But as they were going for this purpose to Stafford, chief town of the county, they found at the gates some retainers of their persecutors, who barred their passage and even attacked them so hotly that they had difficulty in escaping without grievous hurt. They returned to Lichfield, watched by their enemies, and led there a pitiable existence. “And, sir, the aforesaid William and Richard, and several people of the town of Lichfield, are menaced by the said robbers and their maintainers, so that they dare not go anywhere out of the said town.”[176]
This legal document, the original of which has been preserved, is, in many ways, characteristic, and shows us local tyrants not unlike the latter day ones in the Promessi Sposi and their terrible bravi. One may, especially, notice the coolness and determination of the knights, not disconcerted by the death of four of their number; the attack under cover of a wood; the selection of the victims, “garsuns” belonging to rich merchants; the request for hospitality in a priory under pretext of journeying in the king’s service; the expeditious justice of the bailiff, and the persistent surveillance to which the victims were subjected by their lordly robbers.
These, though remarkable, are not quite exceptional facts, and Robert of Rideware was not the only man on the look out in the copses along the roads. Other noblemen were, like him, supported by devoted retainers, ready for any enterprise. Capes and liveries of their masters’ colours were given to them, and they went about as the {153} uniformed soldiers of their chief; a lord well surrounded with his partizans considered himself as above the common law, and it was no easy matter for justice to make herself respected by him. The custom of having a number of resolute followers wearing one’s colours became universal at the end of Edward III’s reign and under Richard II; it survived in spite of statutes[177] during the whole of the fifteenth century, and contributed to render even more embittered and bloody the War of the Roses.
But even outside the periods of civil war, the misdeeds of certain barons and their retainers, or of retainers acting on their own account under cover of their lord’s colours—“notoirs meffesours et meintenours of meffesours,” the statute said of both,[178]—were at times so frequent and serious that parts of the country seemed to be in a state of war. Throughout the fourteenth century, the abuse called maintenance, which word meant in old French protection, was on the increase, in spite of all the efforts of king and Parliament. The great of the land, and some lesser people too, had their own men, sworn to their service and ready to do anything they were commanded, which consisted sometimes in the most monstrous deeds, such as securing property or other goods to which neither their masters, nor any claimant paying their master in order to be thus “protected,”[179] had any title. They terrorized the rightful {154} owners, the judges and the juries, ransoming, beating and maiming any opponent.[180]
Statutes were, as usual, numerous, well-meant, peremptory, and inefficient. The evil was so general that Edward III had to forbid the people nearest him, the chief officers of his court, his “dearest consort, the queen,” his son the prince of Wales, the prelates of Holy Church,[181] to thus interfere with the regular course of the law. The will of the king is that “the poor should enjoy their right just as the rich.”[182] But they do not; great ladies practice maintenance, one among others even dearer to the king than his dear consort, namely his mistress, Alice Perers.[183]
A new reign begins; maintenance flourishes better than ever before. The preamble of a statute of the second year of Richard II[184] gives a perhaps somewhat exaggerated picture of these disorders so as to better justify rigorous measures, but the description must have been at least partly true. We there see—and the king, it is stated, has learnt it both from the petitions addressed to parliament and by public rumour—that certain people in several parts of the kingdom claimed “to have right to divers lands, tenements and other possessions, and some espying women and damsels unmarried, and some desiring to make maintenance in their marches, do gather together to a great number of men of arms and archers, to the manner of war, and confederate themselves by oath and other confederacy.” These people, having no “consideration to God, nor to the laws of Holy Church, nor of the land, {155} nor to right, nor justice, but refusing and setting apart all process of the law, do ride in great routs in divers parts of England, and take possession and set them in divers manors, lands, and other possessions of their own authority, and hold the same long with such force, doing many manner apparelments of war; and in some places do ravish women and damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where please them; and in some places lying in await with such routs do beat and maim, murder and slay the people, for to have their wives and their goods, and the same women and goods retain to their own use; and sometimes take the king’s liege people in their houses, and bring and hold them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine and ransom as it were in a land of war; and sometimes come before the justices in their sessions in such guise with great force, whereby the justices be afraid and not hardy to do the law; and do many other riots and horrible offences, whereby the realm in divers parts is put in great trouble, to the great mischief and grievance of the people.”[185] Which shows how vainly the Good Parliament had worked, for, in 1376, the Commons had already made exactly similar complaints: “Now great riot begins anew by {156} many people in different parts of England who ride with a great number of armed men,” etc.[186]
Besides these organized and quasi-seignorial bands, there were ordinary robbers, numerous enough for chantries to have been founded “for the safety of travellers who were in danger from thieves.”[187] Against those people who impeded travelling much more grievously than ever the floods and broken bridges, Edward I had taken, in 1285, special measures in the Statute of Winchester. These men were described there as accustomed to crouch down in the ditches, coppice, or brushwoods near the roads, especially those linking two market towns. This was, of course, the passage-way of many easy victims, richly laden. The king orders therefore that, for a space of two hundred feet, the ground on each side of the road should be cleared in such a manner that there remain neither coppice nor brushwood, nor hollow nor ditch which serve as shelter for malefactors: “où leur peut tapir pur mal fere.” Only large trees such as oaks might be left. The owner of the soil had to do the work; if he neglected it, he would be responsible for robberies and murders, and have to pay a fine to the king. If the road went through a park, the same obligation lay on the lord, unless he consented to close it by a wall or a hedge so thick, or by a ditch so wide and deep, that robbers could not cross them: “qe meffesurs ne pussent passer ne returner pur mal fere.” The king sets the example and orders such clearings to be made at once on the lands belonging to the crown.[188]
After which, things continued pretty much as before: “Meanwhile,” writes a chronicler for the years 1303–05, {157} “certain malefactors, bound together, four, six, ten or twenty went in company to fairs and markets, rifled the houses of honest people and were not ashamed to capture through their misdoings the goods of the faithful and rich people.”[189] Worse than that: we find as we progress in the fourteenth century, that these common thieves had improved their methods and increased their profits. They allied themselves, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, to the seignorial bands, and were not henceforward unticketed men for whom no one was responsible. The Commons were aware of the fact, and complained accordingly: “Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England that robbers, thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies: may it please our lord the king to charge the nobility of the land that none such be maintained by them, privately nor openly; but that they help to arrest and take such bad ones.”[190] In the preceding parliament the same complaints had been made, and the king had already promised that he would order “such remedy as should be pleasing to God and man.”[191] But neither God nor man had had apparently cause to be pleased.
In addition to the support of the great, these evildoers enjoyed various privileges. Some of them could be met along the roads, cross in hand; both king and church forbade seizing them, they were men who had forsworn the realm. When a robber, a murderer, or any felon found himself too hard pressed, he fled into a church and found safety. In almost all societies having reached a certain stage of civilization the same privilege has existed or still exists. It was known to the Romans, {158} was legislated about by Theodosius the Great, Justinian and the early councils,[192] and is still in constant use in many parts of the East. A church in the Middle Ages was an inviolable place: whoever crossed its threshold was under the protection of God, and many wonderful miracles, the history of which was familiar to everybody, attested with what particular favour the right of sanctuary was regarded especially by the Holy Virgin. At Walsingham, one of the most famous British pilgrimages, people never failed to go and see the “Gate of the Knight,” a gate which had stretched itself so as to give miraculous shelter to a man on horseback, hard pursued by his enemies, and who found himself thus opportunely placed beyond the reach of men as well as beyond the reach of law.
32. THE KNOCKER OF THE DURHAM SANCTUARY (NORMAN).
Several interesting relics of old English sanctuaries are still in existence, such as stone sign-posts which helped the fugitive to avoid either vengeance or justice: “Even to-day, in various parts of England, curious stone crosses, {159} inscribed with the word SANCTUARIUM, are to be met with. Such crosses probably marked the way to a sanctuary and served to guide fugitives.”[193] At Durham is to be seen a beautiful bronze knocker, cast and chiselled in Norman times, still affixed to the cathedral door through which malefactors were admitted to the sanctuary.[194] As soon as they had knocked, the door was opened, the bell in the Galilee tower was rung, and after having confessed before witnesses their crime, which was at once put into writing, the culprits were allowed to enjoy the peace of St. Cuthbert. Several churches had a chair or stool called the fridstool, or peace chair (originally, in some cases, a presbyteral or episcopal seat) the reaching of which by the fugitive secured for him the maximum protection. Beverley has one of the oldest, in stone, perfectly plain, formerly accompanied with a Latin inscription, saying: “This stone seat is called freedstoll, that is, chair of peace, on reaching which a fugitive criminal enjoys complete safety.”[195] The Beverley sanctuary was the most celebrated and safest in England.[196] In this case, and in some others, at Hexham for example, the privilege extended not only to the church, but to one mile or more round it, the space being divided into several circles, usually marked by stone crosses, and it was more and more sinful to remove fugitives violently from the sanctuary the nearer {160} they were to the inner circle. If they were dragged from the altar or the fridstool, no money atonement was accepted from the abductor, who thus apparently forfeited his life. Describing the several circles around the Hexham sanctuary, Prior Richard, who wrote between 1154 and 1167, says of the inner one: “If any one, moved by a spirit of madness, ventured with diabolical boldness to seize one in the stone chair near the altar which the English call fridstol, that is a chair of quiet or peace, or at the shrine of the holy relics, back of the altar, no compensation will be determined for such a glaring sacrilege, no amount of money will serve as an atonement, for it is what the English call botolos (bootless), that is a thing for which there can be no compensation.”[197]
33. THE FRIDSTOOL AT HEXHAM ABBEY, NORTHUMBERLAND (NORMAN).
34. THE FRIDSTOOL AT SPROTBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE.
Fourteenth Century.
That same fridstool has been preserved, being not improbably the original episcopal seat of the famous St. Wilfrid, born about 634, the builder of the old church {163} at Hexham, a crypt of which, with some Roman stones used for the walls, is still in existence.
Near the fridstool was to be seen a queer, short, stone statue now moved to another place in the church, of a man, with brutal features, “wearing a long coat, buttoned in front from the neck to the waist, having three coils or clumsy ligatures . . . round his ankles; and he holds erect with both hands a staff or club as tall as himself.” A. B. Wright, author of an “Essay towards the history of Hexham,” expresses the opinion that, “it was intended to represent an officer of justice, with his staff and plume, his feet bared and manacled, to show that within the bounds of sanctuary he dared not move towards his design and that there his authority availed him not.”[198]
A confirmation of this opinion may be found in the figures carved on the little known but very curious fridstool at Sprotborough, Yorkshire, apparently of the fourteenth century: the fugitive who could not be properly represented seated in the chair, since this would have made it impossible of use, is shown protected and covered by it, while a clumsy and much deteriorated image of some law official, carrying his staff, stands at one of the sides of the chair, but unable to move, being bound to it by a collar or carcannum.[199]
Among the most curious remembrances of the English sanctuaries figure the registers still preserved in some few places, in which were entered the confessions of the criminals at the moment they asked for admittance. The Beverley and the Durham ones have been printed; both date from the fifteenth century; that of Durham covers the years 1464 to 1524; it includes, besides other crimes, 195 murders and homicides, in which 283 persons {164} are concerned, and which are divided as follows, according to the trades and avocations of the perpetrators:
| “Husbandmen | 8 |
| Labourers | 4 |
| Yeomen | 4 |
| Gentlemen | 4 |
| Ecclesiastics | 3 |
| Merchants | 2 |
| Tailor | 1 |
| Plumber | 1 |
| Carpenter | 1 |
| Tanner | 1 |
| Baxster | 1 |
| Glover | 1 |
| Sailor | 1 |
| Apprentice | 1 |
| Under-Bailiff | 1 |
| Servant | 1 |
| Knight (an accessory) | 1 |
“The occupations of the remainder
are not mentioned.”[200]
The entries in the two registers are much alike; the formalities are of the same kind; the Galilee bell is tolled, the culprit confesses; witnesses are called to hear him, and the names of all concerned are given in full. Here is an example translated from the Latin original: “To be remembered that on the 6th day of October, 1477, William Rome and William Nicholson, of the parish of Forsate, fled to the cathedral church of St. Cuthbert in Durham, where on account, among other things, of a felony committed and publicly confessed by them, consisting of the murder by them of William Aliand, they asked from the venerable and religious men, Sir Thomas Haughton, sacristan of the said church, and William Cuthbert, master of the Galilee there, both brothers and monks of the same church, to be admitted to the benefit of the immunity of the church, according to the liberties and privileges conceded in old time to the most glorious confessor Cuthbert. And by the ringing of one bell according to custom, they obtained this benefit. There were present there, seeing and hearing, the discreet men William Heyhyngton, Thomas Hudson, John Wrangham, {165} and Thomas Strynger, witnesses called in especially for the occasion.”[201]
At Beverley there were no witnesses: the culprit swore, his hand on the Book. Besides stating the cause of his flying to sanctuary he took his oath to remain peaceful, to help in case of fire or strife, to be present at mass on the commemoration day of King Athelstan, benefactor of the church, etc.:
“Also ye shall bere no poynted wepen, dagger, knyfe, ne none other wapen, ayenst the kynges pece.
“Also ye shalbe redy at all your power, if ther be any debate or stryf, or oder sodan case of fyre within the towne, to help to surcess it.
“Also ye shalbe redy at the obite of Kyng Adelstan, at the dirige, and the messe, at such tyme as it is done, at the warnyng of the belman of the towne, and doe your dewte in ryngyng, and for to offer at the messe on the morne,”[202] etc.
To drag men out of the sanctuary was a sacrilege punished with whipping, heavy fines, excommunication, or even death. Nicholas le Porter had helped to snatch from the church of the Carmelites of Newcastle some laymen who had taken refuge there “for the safety of their lives,” and who, once delivered to the civil authority, had been executed. Only the Pope’s nuncio could secure for him his pardon, and he had to submit to a public penance very little in accord with our present customs:
“We order,” wrote Bishop Richard to the parson of St. Nicholas of Durham, “that on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the Whitsun-week just coming, he shall receive the whip from your hands publicly, before the chief door of your church, in his shirt, bare-headed, {166} and barefoot.[203] He shall there proclaim in English the reason for his penance and shall admit his fault; and when he has thus been whipped the said Nicholas will go to the cathedral church of Durham, bareheaded, barefoot, and dressed as above, he will walk in front, you will follow him; and you will whip him in the same manner before the door of the cathedral these three days, and he will repeat there the confession of his sin.”[204]
Excommunication was the punishment meted out to Ralph de Ferrers, one of the retainers of the then all-powerful John of Gaunt, for having dragged from the Westminster sanctuary, at mass time, two prisoners escaped from the Tower where his master had sent them, and for having killed one in the process, 1378. The Duke of Lancaster, in alliance then with Wyclif, caused the reformer to write one of his most virulent treatises against the right of sanctuary, asking for its abolition.
The right was, however, maintained; the king himself did not dare to infringe upon it, and, though unwilling, had to let traitors escape, by such means, his revenge or justice. In a case of this kind, one of the Henries wrote to the Prior of Durham, and careful as he was to state that he bound himself only “for the present occasion,” there is no doubt that his acknowledgment of the full immunities enjoyed by St. Cuthbert’s church had nothing {167} exceptional: “Trusty and welbeloved in God,” says the king,[205] “we grete you well. And wheras we undirstand that Robert Marshall late comitted to prison for treason is now escapid and broken from the same into youre church of Duresme, we havyng tender zele and devocion to ye honour of God and St. Cuthbert, and for the tendir favour and affection that the right reverend father in God our right trusty and welbeloved the Bisshop of Duresme our chauncellor of England we have for his merits wol that for that occasion nothyng be attempted that shud be contrarie to the liberties and immunities of [your] church. We therefor wol and charge you that he be surely kept there as ye wol answere unto us for him.” As there could be very little need for the king to declare such an obvious feeling as his respect for St. Cuthbert, the earnest recommendation by which he ends his epistle is most likely to have been the real cause of his writing to his wellbeloved the Prior of Durham. Another characteristic instance is the rebellion of Jack Cade in 1450, when one of his accomplices fled to St. Martin-le-Grand, the most famous of the London sanctuaries. The king in this case wrote to the Dean of St. Martin’s ordering him to produce the traitor. This the Dean refused to do, and he exhibited his charters, which being found correct and explicit, the fugitive was allowed to remain in safety where he was.[206]
The right of sanctuary was most valuable, not only for political offenders, but also, and more frequently, for robbers. They escaped from prison, fled to the church, and saved their lives. “In this year,” 1324, say the “Croniques de London,”[207] “ten persons escaped out of Newgate, of whom five were retaken, and four escaped {168} to the church of St. Sepulchre, and one to the church of St. Bride, and afterwards all for-swore England.” But when the refugees were watched in the church by their personal enemies, their situation, as evidenced by the statute of 1315–1316, became perilous. The authors of a petition[208] to the king set forth in that year that armed men established themselves in the cemetery, and even in the sanctuary, to watch the fugitive, and guarded him so strictly that he could not even go out to satisfy his natural wants. They hindered food from reaching him; if the felon decided to swear that he would quit the kingdom his enemies followed him on the road, and in spite of the law’s protection dragged him away and beheaded him without judgment. The king reforms all these abuses,[209] and re-enacts the old regulations as to abjuration, which were as follows: “When a robber, murderer, or other evil-doer shall fly unto any church upon his confession of felony, the coroner shall cause the abjuration to be made thus: Let the felon be brought to the church door, and there be assigned unto him a port, near or far off, and a time appointed for him to go out of the realm, so that in going towards that port he carry a cross in his hand, and that he go not out of the king’s highway, neither on the right hand, nor on the left, but that he keep it always until he shall be gone out of the land; and that he shall not return without special grace of our lord the king.”
The felon took oath in the following terms: “This hear thou, sir coroner, that I, N., am a robber of sheep, or of any other beast, or a murderer of one or of more, and a felon to our lord the King of England, and because I have done many such evils or robberies in this land, I {169} do abjure the land of our lord Edward King of England, and I shall haste me towards the port of such a place which thou hast given me, and I shall not go out of the highway, and if I do I will that I be taken as a robber and felon to our lord the king; and at such a 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 sea 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 to our lord the king. So God me help and his holy judgment.”[210]
Dover was the port oftenest assigned to abjurors. The time limit varied, being on occasions so brief, that it must have been almost impossible for people on foot to fulfil the condition: which was most probably what the coroner had in view, for he would assign sometimes different delays to different refugees for the same distance. “The distance from York to Dover over London Bridge was nearly 270 miles, and there are several entries of eight days being the allotted time, thus maintaining a rate of over 33 miles a day.”[211] {170}
In the church robbers found themselves side by side with insolvent debtors. These before seeking refuge were usually careful to make a general donation of all their property, and the creditors who cited them to justice remained empty handed. In 1379,[212] Richard II enacted remedial legislation. During five weeks, once a week, the debtor is to be summoned, by proclamation made at the door of the sanctuary, to appear in person or by attorney before the king’s judges. If he does not choose to appear justice shall take its course; sentence will be passed, and the property that he had given away will be shared among the creditors.
This, however, served, as usual, only for a time. In the first years of the following reign the Commons are found lamenting the same abuses. Apprentices who have plundered their masters, tradesmen in debt, robbers, flee to St. Martin-le-Grand and live there in quiet on the money they have stolen. They employ the leisure which this peaceful existence leaves them in patiently forging “obligations, indentures, acquitances,” imitating the signatures and seals of honest city merchants and of other people. Felons, murderers and thieves avail themselves of this restful seclusion for preparing new crimes; they go out at night to commit them, and safely return in the morning to their inviolate retreat. The king, apparently puzzled as to what to do, when the abuse is so great and the privilege {171} so sacred, vaguely promises that “reasonable remedy shall be had.”[213]
Some years later (A.D. 1447) the Goldsmiths’ Company of London was startled on finding that a quantity of sham gold and silver plate and jewellery had been issued from the privileged precincts of St. Martin-le-Grand’s sanctuary, to the great detriment of their own worshipful company. They brought the facts to the notice of the king, who wrote to the Dean recommending him to check this abuse if possible: “Trustie and welbeloved, we grete you wel, and let you to wote that we be informed that there be divers persons dwellinge within our seinctuarie of St. Martin’s that forge and sell laton and coper, some gilt and some sylverd for gold and silver, unto the great deceipt of our lege people. . . . ”[214] The tone of the king’s letter is very moderate; he seems to write only to please the Goldsmiths’ Company, while realizing that he is powerless in the matter, and that his recommendations will come to nothing.
A priest who took refuge in a church was not obliged to quit England; he swore that he was a priest, and “enjoyed ecclesiastic privilege, according to the praiseworthy custom of the kingdom.”[215] But the church, who accorded to all comers the benefit of sanctuary, reserved to herself the power of removal from it. “In this year (1320), a woman who was named Isabel of Bury, killed the priest of the church of All Saints, near London Wall, and she remained in the same church five days, so that the Bishop of London issued his letter that the church would not save her, wherefore she was brought out of the church to Newgate and was hanged on the third day afterwards.”[216] {172}
In those days, when riots and rebellions were not uncommon, the right of sanctuary might be valuable for any one; reformers like Wyclif vainly protested against this exorbitant but useful custom.[217] A bishop even, however sacred his person, might have to spur his horse and fly towards a church to save his head. The Bishop of Exeter tried and failed when Isabella and her son came to overthrow Edward II:[218] “The same day came one Sir Walter de Stapleton, who was Bishop of Exeter, and the king’s treasurer the previous year, riding to his house in Elde Deanes lane to his dinner, and there he was proclaimed traitor; and he seeing that fled on his horse towards the church of St. Paul’s, and was there met and quickly unhorsed, and brought to Cheap, and there he was stripped and his head cut off.”
Under Richard III might be seen a queen and a king’s son refuse to quit the sacred enclosure of Westminster, in which their lives were safe, thanks to the sanctity of the place. Sir Thomas More has left in his history of the usurper, the first real history in the national language, a moving picture of the plucky defence of Edward IV’s widow and of the persistent efforts of Richard to snatch the second child of the late king from the abbey. To reiterated demands the queen replied: “In what place coulde I recken him sure, if he be not sure in this the sentuarye whereof was there never tiraunt yet so develish, that durst presume to breake. . . . For soth he hath founden a goodly glose, by whiche that place that may defend a thefe, may not save an innocent.”[219] The “goodly glose” of Richard III consisted simply in having the right of sanctuary abolished. In a speech in favour of {173} the measure, which was aimed especially at the places of refuge of St. Paul’s and Westminster, the Duke of Buckingham is represented by More drawing a very lively as well as an exact picture of the disorders there: “What a rabble of theves, murtherers, and malicious heyghnous traitours, and that in twoo places specyallye. . . . Mens wyves runne thither with theyr housebandes plate, and saye, thei dare not abyde with theyr housebandes for beatinge. Theves bryng thyther theyr stolen goodes, and there lyve thereon. There devise thei newe roberies; nightlye they steale out, they robbe and reve, and kyll, and come in again as though those places gave them not only a safe garde for the harme they have done, but a license also to doo more.”[220]
This privilege endured, however, and even survived the Reformation; but from that hour it was less respected. Lord Chancellor Bacon speaks of the sanctuary of Colnham, near Abingdon, as being considered “insufficient” for traitors, under Henry VII; several political criminals who had taken refuge there, were seized, therefore, and one of them was executed.[221] Sanctuaries were suppressed, legally at least, in the twenty-first year of the reign of James I: “And be it alsoe enacted by the authoritie of this present parliament that no sanctuarie or priviledge {174} of sanctuary shal be hereafter admitted or allowed in any case.”[222] But they lingered on in England as well as on the continent. Cromwell complains, in one of his most famous speeches, of the difficulties his Government sometimes experience on that account when they have to ask from foreign potentates that justice be done. He alludes to the recent assassination of an English messenger, and says: “It is the pleasure of the Pope at any time to tell you that though the man is murdered, yet his murderer has got into the sanctuary.” Another proof that, after the statute of James I, the right of sanctuary did not fall entirely into disuse in England is that it had to be re-abolished in 1697; sanctuaries are to be found even so late as the reign of George I, when the one at St. Peter’s, Westminster, was demolished.
With all their penal severity, law and custom still gave other encouragements to malefactors. They often received charters of pardon which the royal chancery willingly granted because they must be paid for, while the Commons unweariedly renewed their complaints against this abuse. The priest, John Crochille, states to the king in parliament that while he was at the Court of Rome he has been outlawed, and was imprisoned on his return. The chancellor has granted him a charter of pardon, but he is “so impoverished that he has not wherewith to pay for the said charter.”[223]
Charters were thus given to the innocent for money, and to “common felons and murderers” also, which had two results: the number of brigands increased by reason of their impunity, and men dared not bring the most formidable criminals to justice for fear of seeing them return pardoned and ready to wreak a terrible revenge.
Most unluckily, the interest that the great had in {175} the continuance of this abuse tended also to its maintenance. In league with their retainers, they wanted to defend them from justice as they themselves were defended by them in the street or on the road; and the best means of saving these bravi from the consequences of some assassination was to obtain or buy for them a charter of pardon. The Commons knew it, and reminded the king that often the protectors of such criminals secured charters for them on the representation that these men were abroad, occupied in fighting for the prince. The charter once obtained, the malefactors returned and renewed their ill-deeds, without fear of being troubled by any one.[224]
For all these reasons the traveller would not have been prudent if he had not foreseen on starting the chance of some untoward meeting, and if he had not armed himself in consequence. This was such a recognized necessity that the Chancellor of the University of Oxford allowed the students, on the occasion of a journey, to carry arms, otherwise strictly forbidden.[225]
There was, then, at best, but moderate safety against robbers, and there was not always much against the sheriff’s officers themselves. At a time when prowlers were so numerous, it was enough to be a stranger in the district, especially if it were night, to be sent to gaol on suspicion, {176} as shown by a statute of Edward III.[226] Nothing more general than the terms of this law; the power to arrest is almost unlimited: “Whereas, in the statute made at Winchester in the time of King Edward, grandfather to the king that now is, it is contained, That if any stranger pass by the country in the night, of whom any have suspicion, he shall presently be arrested and delivered to the sheriff, and remain in ward till he be duly delivered; and because there have been divers manslaughters, felonies, and robberies[227] done in times past, by people that be called roberdesmen, wastors, and draw-latches . . . ” whoever suspects any to be one such, “be it by day or by night,” shall cause him immediately to be arrested by the constables of the towns; the man shall be kept in prison till the justices of gaol delivery come down, and meanwhile inquiry shall be made.
Think now of a stranger passing through the town by night; some constable feels suspicious and wants to arrest him; imagining himself already in prison “till the justices come down,” the man runs away instead of allowing himself to be taken. The statute has provided for his case.[228] “If they will not obey the arrest, hue and cry shall be levied upon them, and such as keep the watch shall follow with hue and cry with all the town, and the towns near, and so hue and cry shall be made from town to town until that they be taken and delivered {177} to the sheriff.”[229] A singular picture: night wraps in its shadows the crooked lanes of the unlit city; the stranger is perhaps a robber, perhaps an honest man, who has lost his way, not knowing the place; his fault is not to be within doors by curfew; he gropes his way as best he can; the watch perceives and challenges him; fearing the result he takes to his heels, and behold! the hue and cry begins, the watch runs, the town wakes up, lights appear, and one after the other the more zealous join in the chase. If the town is fortified, the postern gates have long been closed, and he will be surely taken. Scarcely can he hope to cast himself into some unshut doorway at a turning of the street, behind which he will cower, listening with trembling hand and beating heart to the watch who pass heavily along at a charging pace, followed by a crowd of furious shouters. The number of steps lessen, and the shouts become fainter, then die away, lost in the depths of the city.
If the place is not important enough to be enclosed by walls, the first thought of the fugitive will be to gain the open, and then he must not fear marshes, ditches, hedges; he must know how, at a bend of the ground, to leave the high-road and profit by any place where the Statute of Winchester has been negligently applied. But for that he is lost, the constables follow, the town follows, the “cry” continues, and at the next village the scene of the start will begin over again. The inhabitants, warned by the clamour, light their lanterns, and see, they are already in the chase. Before he reaches the end of the high-street some peasant will be found on the alert, ready to bar the passage of the road to him. All have an interest in it, all have been robbed, or their friends, or relatives; {178} someone of their kin may have been wounded or murdered on the road as he returned from market. Every one has heard of such misfortunes, and feels himself personally menaced. Hence this zeal in joining the chase with the hue and cry, and the conviction that, running so hard and making so many folk run, the fugitive must be a famous brigand ready for the gibbet.[230]
PART II LAY WAYFARERS
35. AN ADVENTURE SEEKER.
(From the MS. 2 B. vii; English; early Fourteenth Century.)