And sanctuary was, as a rule, respected. When Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, went into sanctuary at Westminster, she was unmolested, and might have stayed there all her life had she chosen. Elizabeth Woodville gave birth to her elder boy, “forsaken by her friends and in great penury,” yet in safe keeping. Here she placed the child in his father’s arms on his return. A second time she fled thither when that boy, thirteen years of age, was in the hands of her enemy and in the Tower. She took with her the younger boy, but we all know what happened. Sanctuary was broken. The Archbishops gave their consent to the sacrilege even though they knew, everybody must have known, that the boys would be murdered one after the other. It was the lot of every prince or possible heir to the throne in those times to be murdered or to be slain in battle. Henry the Sixth, Prince Edward, the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Exeter, are all examples instructive enough. Yet the Archbishops yielded. Why? I think it is clear that they dreaded above all things a boy King: above all things they wanted repose for the distracted land. It was a case of choosing between the lives of two innocent boys, or fresh wars, new distractions, which? The violation of sanctuary in this case is remarkable for the opportunity it gave the Duke of Buckingham to attack the whole system of sanctuary.
“I dare well avow it, weigh the good that they do with the hurt that cometh of them, and ye shall find it much better to lack both than to have both. And this I say, although they were not abused as they now be, and so long have been, that I fear me they will ever be, while men be afraid to set their hands to the amendment: as though God and St. Peter were the patrons of ungracious living. Now unthrifts riot and run in debt upon the boldness of these places: yea, and rich men run thither with poor men’s goods. There they build, there they spend and bid their creditors go whistle for them. Men’s wives run thither with their husbands’ plate, and say they dare not abide with their husbands for beating. Thieves bring thither their stolen goods, and there live thereon. There devise they new robberies nightly to steal out, they rob, and reave, and kill, and come in again as though those places gave them not only a safeguard for the harm they have done, but a licence also to do more mischief.”
It must not be forgotten that Skelton the poet escaped the wrath of Wolsey by taking refuge in the Westminster Sanctuary, where he lived in safety and died unmolested.
In the Italian Relations of England (Camden Society), probably written at the end of the fifteenth century, the author bears testimony of the same kind to the evils of sanctuary. Apparently the institution did not exist in Italy.
“The clergy are they who have the supreme sway over the country, both in peace and war. Amongst other things, they have provided that a number of sacred places in the kingdom should serve for the refuge and escape of all delinquents: and no one, were he a traitor to the crown, or had he practised against the king’s own person, can be taken out of these by force. And a villain of this kind, who, for some great excess that he has committed, has been obliged to take refuge in one of these sacred places, often goes out of it to brawl in the public streets, and then, returning to it, escapes with impunity for every fresh offence he may have been guilty of. This is no detriment to the purses of the priests, nor to the other perpetual sanctuaries: but every church is a sanctuary for 40 days: and, if a thief or a murderer who has taken refuge in one cannot leave it in safety during these 40 days, he gives notice that he wishes to leave England. In which case, being stripped to the shirt by the chief magistrate of the place, and a crucifix placed in his hand, he is conducted along the road to the sea, where, if he finds a passage, he may go with a ‘God speed you!’ But if he should not find one, he walks into the sea up to the throat, and three times asks for a passage: and this is repeated till a ship appears, which comes for him, and so he departs in safety. It is not unamusing to hear, how the women and children lament over the misfortune of these exiles, asking ‘how they can live so destitute out of England’: adding, moreover, that ‘they had better have died than go out of the world,’ as if England were the whole world!”
Henry the Seventh in 1483 procured a bull from Pope Innocent the Eighth, which allowed of malefactors being taken out of sanctuary when it was proved that they had left sanctuary in order to commit some mischief. And that if persons suspected of high treason took refuge it should be permitted to the King to station guards at the gates and elsewhere to keep them from going out. Later, in the year 1504, Henry the Seventh procured another bull permitting him to take out persons suspected of high treason. This bull would seem to allow the actual destruction of sanctuary.
The procedure in the claim of sanctuary was as follows (the statute being put up in the Custom Hall of the Cinque Ports, Dover), (Italian Relations):—
“And when any shall flee into the church or churchyard for felony, claiming thereof the privilege for any action of his life, the head officer of the same liberty where the said church or churchyard is, with his fellow jurats or commoners of the same liberty, shall come to him and shall ask him the cause of being there, and if he will not confess felony immediately, it shall be entered in record, and his goods and chattels shall be forfeited, and he shall tarry there forty days, or before, if he will, he shall make his abjuration in form following before the head officer, who shall assign to him the port of his passage: and after his abjuration there shall be delivered unto him by the head officer, or his assignees, a cross, and proclamation shall be made that while he be going by the highway towards the port to him assigned, he shall go in the king’s peace, and that no man shall grieve him in so doing, on pain to forfeit his goods and chattels. And the said felon shall lay his right hand on the book, and swear this:—‘You hear, Mr. Coroner, that I ... a thief, have stolen such a thing, or have killed such a woman, or man, or a child, and am the king’s felon, and for that I have done many evil deeds and felonys in this same his land, I do abjure and forswear the lands of the kings of England, and that I shall haste myself to the port of ... which you have given or assigned me: and that I shall not go out of the highway, and if I do, I will that I shall be taken as a thief, and the king’s felon, and at the same place I shall tarry but one ebb and flood, if I may have passage: and if I cannot have passage in the same place, I shall go every day into the sea to my knees and above, crying, Passage, for the love of God, and King ... his sake: and if I may not within forty days together, I shall get me again into the church, as the king’s felon. So help me God and by this book according to your judgment.’ And if a clerk flying to the church for felony, affirming himself to be a clerk, he shall not abjure the realm, but yielding himself to the laws of the realm, shall enjoy the liberties of the church, and shall be delivered to the ordinary, to be kept safe to the convict prison, according to the laudable custom of the realm of England.”