Sanctuary: The Legal Institution in England

Within the Minster of Beverley, at its liturgical center next to the high altar, sits a stone chair that once bore the inscription, "Haec sedes lapidea Freedstoll dicitur i.e. pacis cathedra, ad quam reus fugiendo perveniens omnimodam habet securitatem."1 On these words the sanctuary seeker relied as he made his desperate way to the refuge that would protect him from the penalties that the Common Law would enforce against him.2 If he could reach the sanctuary limits of the church, confess his crime to the clergy, and invoke the clergy's protection, the fugitive escaped the reach of the criminal law. For a time,' the walls erected by the clergy against the outside world held the process of the king's law in suspense. This Article discusses the institution of sanctuary that was recognized under the Common Law of England from at least the early Middle Ages until the Jacobean period, that is, from