Under the masterful tyranny of Henry VIII. it was held that too many British subjects escaped this wise, and it was enacted in 1530[[241]] that those who had taken sanctuary should not leave the realm, but should be sent to one of the privileged places (if it were not full, which at that time meant if it contained not more than twenty people), there to remain as sanctuary persons for the rest of their lives; and they were also to be branded on the thumb.[[242]]
The great sanctuaries comprised Westminster Abbey, and at least thirty other celebrated monasteries,[[243]] amongst which were St. Martin-le-Grand, Beverley, Hexham, Durham, and Beaulieu, which possessed special charters and immunities.[[244]] Though traitors, Jews, infidels, and those guilty of sacrilege were not to be received, and though even the peace of a minster might, in the strifes of State, be broken through as in 1398, or evaded as in 1483, yet those within were generally safe from all men. A follower of Jack Cade[[245]] was protected against the king, and even one of the murderers[[246]] of the little princes in the Tower found refuge in St. Martin’s Sanctuary.[[247]]
There were whole colonies of these fugitives round the great abbeys already mentioned. “The right of asylum,” says Dean Stanley,[[248]] “rendered the whole precinct a vast Cave of Adullam for all the distressed and discontented in the metropolis who desired, according to the phrase of the time, to take Westminster.” But the power of the State increased more and more, and the dominion of the Church was sapped away.[[249]] In 1483 King Henry VII. obtained a Bull from Innocent VIII. which allowed malefactors to be taken from the sanctuaries if it were proved that they had sallied out from them to commit crimes. In 1504 he procured a Bull allowing him to take out persons suspected of treason. In 1534 King Henry VIII. said that lese-majesty was treason, and deprived those guilty of privilege.[[250]] In 1535 sanctuary persons were forbidden to carry weapons or to go out between sunset and sunrise.[[251]] In 1540 many sanctuaries were extinguished, and several offences, such as wilful murder, rape, burglary, and arson, were excluded from privilege.[[252]]
The sanctuary at the Abbey was broken up in 1566,[[253]] and doubtless all the others came to a sudden end upon the dissolution of the monasteries. In 1604 the old rules and laws about sanctuaries were repealed.[[254]] In the year 1623 all rights of refuge were taken away.[[255]] The idea lingered in the popular imagination, however, and in 1697 it had to be pointed out by statute that arrests for debt could be made in “pretended privileged places.”[[256]] These districts (such as the Mint, Suffolk Place, etc.) were alluded to again in 1722,[[257]] and likewise in 1724[[258]] as regards Wapping, Stepney, in Middlesex—more than a century after legal abolition.
Yet another way was open to people of good position or repute by which they could extricate themselves from the ordinary course of law[[259]] (but not against the suit of the king, and there were also other limitations), and that was by means of formal Compurgation. We have seen that in Teutonic communities the oath of a slave had no legal value, while the oath of a thane was worth those of six labourers. Thus kings and bishops might sometimes rebut accusations by means of their word alone.[[260]] The Visigoths allowed an accused person (of credit) to reply in this manner,[[261]] but the practice was condemned by the Church as inciting to perjury.[[262]]
The usual course[[263]] was for the accused to obtain eleven or twelve compurgators[[264]]—relations, neighbours, or fellow-craftsmen who would swear with him to the justice of his cause.[[265]] Perjury was indeed often suspected in these compurgations, and if a man of bad character got his co-witnesses[[266]] (and if he could not he was generally sent to the ordeal) he was frequently banished in spite of their testimony.[[267]]
In the beginning of the thirteenth century Pope Innocent III. modified the oath,[[268]] and afterwards witnesses swore only to character, to their belief in the accused’s credibility. Compurgation appealed especially to the clergy,[[269]] and was even called the Purgatio Canonica.[[270]] Cut off by their calling from all lay connections, they could rely the more upon their own brethren. It was by solemnly swearing with twelve priests as compurgators that Pope Leo III. elected to clear himself from certain accusations, in the presence of Charlemagne (in A.D. 800);[[271]] and in 803 that emperor ordered priests to defend themselves by taking an oath with three, five, or seven compurgators. The practice began to decline towards the close of the twelfth century,[[272]] but still lingered on into the sixteenth century in England, and in isolated cases to later times. The Wager of Law was not formally repealed till 1833.[[273]]
The Rule of the Church
The Christians had always been an exclusive body of people, at first from fear, and afterwards from fanaticism. They excommunicated all offending members, thus not only cutting them off from fellowship, but also depriving them of those rites which in their creed were necessary for salvation. This custom of excluding from communion was from the first a formidable spiritual weapon among believers; what it became when the Christians could also wield the sword of temporal power we shall see in the course of time. In the early days they were a world within the world—vehement in convictions, stimulated by persecutions, and extremely well organised.
Their bishops arbitrated and ruled in ecclesiastical matters,[[274]] and also in civil suits between individuals who were unwilling to go to law before unbelievers, and doubtless they sat in judgment on their own followers before the advent of the regular Ecclesiastical Courts of subsequent ages.[[275]] From the Apostolic times they had resented resort to external tribunals,[[276]] and, in a series of Councils,[[277]] the Church had forbidden appeal to the civil powers against the decisions of Christian Courts; by the eighty-seventh Canon of the Fourth Council of Carthage (A.D. 398) no Catholic was to bring any cause, whether just or unjust, before an heretical judge.