PLAN OF BEVERLEY MINSTER

There is much of interest to see around the Minster. The best view of the great towers is obtained from the entrance to Minster Moorgate; that of the interior of the nave from the upper floor at the west end, which is reached by a staircase in the north tower.

Climb to the top of the tower and you will, if the day is fine, be rewarded with a wide-reaching view over Beverley Westwood and the Plain of Holderness. Go into the chancel and examine the Percy Tomb. You are looking at the most magnificent stonework of the fourteenth century in the whole of Europe. Lift up the seats in the canons’ stalls and you will see the best collection of carved miserere seats in England. Sit in the ancient Frith-Stool and you can imagine yourself to be either an innocent victim of oppression or a criminal of the deepest dye—whichever you prefer. Stand before the great east window, and admire the beauty of the old stained glass of which it is composed. Or stand before the great west window and you will see portrayed in its coloured glass Augustine and Aethelberht of Kent and St. John of Beverley, the marriage of Edwin and Ethelburga, the baptism of Edwin by Paulinus, and Coifi, the heathen high priest, with his broken idols—an epitome of the early church history of our country.

XVI.
SANCTUARIES.

The Church in the Middle Ages had a tremendous hold over people’s minds, and this was largely due to the power which it wielded over their bodies. Foremost amongst the rights then possessed by it was the right of ‘Sanctuary,’ by which the poor and injured could gain safety from the attacks of their oppressors, and one who had unwittingly committed a crime might save himself from a criminal’s death. This right belonged, in greater or less degree, to all the churches scattered up and down the country.

Let us imagine a by-no-means uncommon event in the years just after the Black Death. A husbandman is working for his master as a free labourer and small cottager. His father before him had also been a free labourer, but his grandfather had in his youth been a serf of the lord of a neighbouring manor. This grandfather of his, because the serfs had increased beyond their lord’s requirements, had been allowed with others to go free; and taking advantage of his freedom he had sought and obtained work as a free labourer under a new master. But now, after the Black Death, labourers are scarce; and the present lord of the manor is causing to be looked up all the descendants of those serfs whom his ancestor had set free. Thus the lord’s bailiff has been making enquiries about our freeman, and has sent two servants to arrest him and take him back to the serfdom that his grandfather had once suffered.

But our freeman is a man of spirit, and will not be taken without resistance. Knives are drawn, and he defends himself. In the scuffle one of his assailants stumbles and falls, and unluckily for himself and for our freeman, he happens to fall upon his own weapon, which pierces his body and so causes his death. His comrade, chicken-hearted, fears to continue the struggle alone, and makes off to the village for help.

What is our freeman to do? If he remains where he is and allows himself to be taken, not only will he be claimed as a serf by the lord of the neighbouring manor, but he will also be charged with causing the death of the lord’s servant.

Little chance is there of his proving himself innocent of his assailant’s death; for the dead man’s companion will not fail to swear that the death-blow was struck by him. In any case he will be thrown into the town jail for an indefinite length of time, perhaps not to come out alive, or to come out maimed for life. Were not three prisoners, two men and a woman, thrown into the jail last year on suspicion of having been concerned in a murder, and were they not kept there till one of the men died, the other lost a foot, and the woman lost both feet, from disease produced by the foul condition of the cell into which they were cast?

So thinks our freeman to himself. It is little comfort to him to remember that when the two prisoners who remained alive were eventually tried, they were found ‘not guilty’ of the charge laid against them, and were told by the justices that they could depart.