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 sothan case of fyre within the towne, to help to surcess it.
Also ye shalbe redy at the obite[[35]] of Kyng Adelstan ... at the warnyng of the belman of the towne, and doe your dewte in ryngyng....’[ryngyng....’]
Then having taken the oath he will be required to ‘kysse the book.’
But in the eyes of the law our freeman is a felon—a man over whose head there hangs a charge of murder, and who will have little chance of proving his innocence of this charge. He must avail himself of the law established of old and confirmed by King Edward II.—
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 to 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.
Such were the rights of sanctuary possessed by the Minster at Beverley. For the space of a mile around the church in every direction the peace of St. John extended, and within this circle—the boundaries of which were marked by the erection of a ‘sanctuary cross’ on each of the roads entering Beverley—partial safety was assured to all fugitives. But the nearer a fugitive got to the high altar of the Minster the safer he became. Seated in the Frith-Stool that stood by the side of the altar he was absolutely safe; for none—not even the King himself—dare violate its sacred peace.
The Beverley frith-stool now stands in the chancel near the north-east transept. A plain, massive seat of stone it is, so massive and so simple in design that its age seems greater than that of the Minster itself. Possibly it dates back to the days of the Saxon King Aethelstan. It was once engraved, we know, with a Latin inscription, the translation of which ran thus:
This stone seat is called FREEDSTOLL, that is, chair of peace, on reaching which a fugitive criminal enjoys complete safety.
A frith-stool very similar to the Beverley one exists at Hexham Abbey in Northumberland, and in the village church of Halsham in our East Riding there is what is thought to be another. Here, however, the ‘chair of peace’ is built into the wall of the chancel between the sedilia and the priests’ door. No other examples are known in Yorkshire.