Sanctuary in Sixteenth-Century England
type: CreativeWork
description: On the eve of the sixteenth century, sanctuary in England operated under the common law in much the same manner as it had done for centuries. ‘Common’ sanctuaries (a customary right pertaining to all churches and churchyards) permitted felons to seek refuge for a maximum of forty days, before they were either exiled (by availing themselves of the peculiar English custom of ‘abjuring the realm’), or sentenced before the Royal Courts. ‘Private’ sanctuaries (ecclesiastical liberties possessing royal and papal charters endowing them with greater privileges than common sanctuaries), in contrast, could shelter virtually all felons for duration of life. However, in the early-sixteenth century sanctuary’s position under the common law was radically altered, which ushered in the greatest reformation to the privilege since its inception. The majority of these changes were effected within little more than a decade, resulting from the broad and ambitious legislative programme undertaken by the Henrician parliaments of the 1530s. The culmination of sanctuary’s reformation was the act of 32 Hen. VIII c. 12 (hereafter referred to as the act of 1540), which abolished all private sanctuaries and substituted them with eight ‘sanctuary-towns’, in apparent emulation of the six Old Testament ‘Cities of Refuge’. The types of felons who could seek sanctuary after this date were curtailed in a further nod to scriptural precedent. Sanctuary law remained almost completely unaltered thereafter until the first parliament of James I in 1603, before the privilege was abolished entirely in James’s final parliament in 1624. However, according to the corpus of sanctuary scholarship the act of 1540 effected the de facto destruction of sanctuary long before it disappeared from the statute books. For some, the act of 1540 was little more than a concessionary measure in order to placate those who still attached meaning to an archaic, ‘medieval’ privilege, which had no place under the ‘modernising’ Tudo…
abstract: On the eve of the sixteenth century, sanctuary in England operated under the common law in much the same manner as it had done for centuries. ‘Common’ sanctuaries (a customary right pertaining to all churches and churchyards) permitted felons to seek refuge for a maximum of forty days, before they were either exiled (by availing themselves of the peculiar English custom of ‘abjuring the realm’), or sentenced before the Royal Courts. ‘Private’ sanctuaries (ecclesiastical liberties possessing royal and papal charters endowing them with greater privileges than common sanctuaries), in contrast, could shelter virtually all felons for duration of life. However, in the early-sixteenth century sanctuary’s position under the common law was radically altered, which ushered in the greatest reformation to the privilege since its inception. The majority of these changes were effected within little more than a decade, resulting from the broad and ambitious legislative programme undertaken by the Henrician parliaments of the 1530s. The culmination of sanctuary’s reformation was the act of 32 Hen. VIII c. 12 (hereafter referred to as the act of 1540), which abolished all private sanctuaries and substituted them with eight ‘sanctuary-towns’, in apparent emulation of the six Old Testament ‘Cities of Refuge’. The types of felons who could seek sanctuary after this date were curtailed in a further nod to scriptural precedent. Sanctuary law remained almost completely unaltered thereafter until the first parliament of James I in 1603, before the privilege was abolished entirely in James’s final parliament in 1624. However, according to the corpus of sanctuary scholarship the act of 1540 effected the de facto destruction of sanctuary long before it disappeared from the statute books. For some, the act of 1540 was little more than a concessionary measure in order to placate those who still attached meaning to an archaic, ‘medieval’ privilege, which had no place under the ‘modernising’ Tudo…
author: Everett, Edward
language: eng
keywords: sanctuary, asylum, refuge, sixteenth-century, Tudor, Cities of Refuge, Inns of Court, Reformation, common sanctuary, private sanctuary, Thomas Cromwell, Westminster Abbey
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-05-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:56Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.81490