Archbishop Sudbury excommunicated the governor of the Tower (Sir Alan Buschall) and all his aiders and abettors. Richard II. ordered the reading of the excommunication to be stopped and the church to be reconsecrated. The abbot refused to allow the place to be hallowed, and the services ceased for a while. There was now an open quarrel between Church and State, which continued till the Parliament met at Gloucester in October, ‘when the whole question of sanctuary was brought up in all its issues.’
Mr. Trevelyan sums up the case in these words: ‘In vain Wycliffe argued, in vain the Commons petitioned and the Lords hectored. From all the mountains of talk in the discussions at Gloucester there came forth the most absurd legislative mouse in the shape of a Statute passed at Westminster by the next Parliament in the spring of 1379. By this Act the fraudulent debtor taking sanctuary was to be summoned at the door of the church once a week for 31 days. If at the end of that time he refused to appear, judgment was to go against him by default, and his goods, even if they had been given away by collusion, might be seized by his creditors. This mild measure, which was scarcely an interference with the right of sanctuary itself, was accepted even by the staunchest adherents of the Church.’
If a felon succeeded in taking sanctuary in a church or other privileged place before capture, he was free from the clutches of the law for the space of forty days. He was allowed to be supplied with food, but he was sufficiently guarded to prevent his escape. If he elected to abjure the realm an oath was administered to him.[378]
There seem to have been special privileges of sanctuary in the city, for we learn that at the end of the thirteenth century it was ordered by the aldermen that no robber, homicide, nor other fugitive in the churches should be watched. This ordinance was for the purpose of giving a fugitive a chance of escape out of sanctuary. In 1321 a royal pardon was granted to the city for neglecting to keep watch on those who had fled for sanctuary to the city churches. This was granted, however, on the distinct understanding that in future a watch was to be kept on such fugitives in the same manner as in other parts of the realm.[379]
In 1334 the Mayor was roundly taken to task, and made to do penance by the Archbishop for allowing a felon to escape from the Church of Allhallows’, Gracechurch.[380]
The sanctuary men were marked by a badge representing cross keys.
Education.—Mediæval London was well supplied with facilities for education. We know that there were many schools in various parts of the city, although we still require more definite information. The Church supplied the public well with schools, although for a time these fell into decay, and then it was that lay schools came into existence.
Bishop Stubbs writes: ‘Over against the many grievances which modern thought has alleged against the unlearned ages which passed before the invention of printing it ought to be set to the credit of mediæval society that clerkship was never despised or made unnecessarily difficult of acquisition. The sneer of Walter Map, who declared that in his days the villains were attempting to educate their ignoble and degenerate offspring in the liberal arts proves that even in the twelfth century the way was open. Richard II. rejected the proposition that the villains should be forbidden to send their children to the schools to learn “clergie”; and even at a time when the supply of labour ran so low that no man who was not worth twenty shillings a year in land or rent was allowed to apprentice his child to a craft, a full and liberal exception was made in favour of learning; “every man or woman”—the words occur in the Petition and Statute of Artificers passed in 1406—“of what state or condition that he be, shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm.” ’ Again: ‘Schools were by no means uncommon things; there were schools in all cathedrals; monasteries and colleges were everywhere, and wherever there was a monastery or a college there was a school. Towards the close of the Middle Ages, notwithstanding many causes for depression, there was much vitality in the schools.’[381]
The larger English abbeys about the country not only had schools within their own precincts, but others dependent upon them in the neighbouring towns.
Fitz-Stephen, in his description of London as preserved in the city’s Liber Custumarum (vol. i. p. 5), particularises the Church of St. Martin-le-Grand as one of the principal churches of London which had ancient and prerogative schools,[382] the others being St. Paul’s and Holy Trinity, Aldgate. In other texts of Fitz-Stephen’s work the names of the churches are not mentioned, and Stow, overlooking the text in the city archives, gives the three schools as attached to St. Paul’s, St. Peter’s Westminster, and St. Saviour’s.[383]