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Henry VII and Sanctuary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Peter Iver Kaufman
Peter Iver Kaufman
Affiliation:
assistant professor of religion inthe University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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Extract

The association of the early Tudors with the elimination of ecclesiastical prerogatives and immunities has achieved a conspicuous respectability. Most attention is lavished justifiably upon Henry VIII, but the plural is stubborn. Henry VII has been paired with his more combative son, and his reign (1485–1509) is commonly credited as an important phase in the evolution of anticlerical prohibitions. Scholars seem convinced that he and his council “attacked” sanctuary and that the privilege's abridgment was something of a rehearsal for the English Reformation. But it is still possible, and not wholly unprecedented, to challenge the familiar view and to ask whether policies appraised as “notable encroachments” were either notable or, in fact, encroachments. After a sketch of the practice of sanctuary and a synoptical review of the thinking that led to sanctuary's destruction, we can return to Henry VII's council and courts and reevaluate earliest Tudor policy as an illustration of certain late medieval transformations of the abiding coalition between crown and church.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1984 , pp. 465 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1984

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References

1. The term is Bellamy, John's, Crime and Public Order in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), p. 111.Google Scholar Both J.H. Baker and E.W. Ives speak of the earliest Tudor “attack”: see Baker's, edition of The Reports of Sir John Spelman, 2 vols. (London, 1977–1978), 2: 341;Google Scholar and Ives's, “Crime, Sanctuary, and Royal Authority under Henry VIII: The Exemplary Sufferings of the Savage Family,” in On the Laws and Customs of England, ed. Arnold, Morris S. et al. (Chapel Hill, 1981), p. 303.Google Scholar Compare Chrimes, S.B., Henry VII (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 240, 244,Google Scholar though Chrimes's insistence that Henry's “encroachments” were unremarkable and inconsequential seems not to have unsettled the issue.

2. The best study of sanctuary in England is still Thornley, Isobel's “The Destruction of Sanctuary,” in Tudor Studies, ed. Seton-Watson, R.W. (London, 1924), pp. 182–207.Google Scholar Her few pages on Henry VII, however, are impenetrably ambivalent. Before Bellamy, she wrote of “notable encroachments” but restricted the term to the earliest Tudor refusal to allow persons suspected of treason to take asylum. Several lines later (p. 200) Henry VII's program was reduced to a collection of “small encroachments.” Pages earlier (p. 185), then interested in emphasizing the amplitude of Henry VIII's reign, Thornley charged that autonomous ecclesiastical jurisdictions were “almost unimpaired at the accession of the first Tudor—and indeed at that of his son,” to whom it was left “to level liberties to make the foundation for liberty.”

3. Gabel, Leona, Benefit of Clergy in England in the Later Middle Ages (Northampton, Mass., 1929), pp. 31–47,Google Scholar and for Henry VII's reforms, pp. 87 and 124; Sharpe, J.A., “A History of Crime in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: A Review of the Field,” Social History 7 (1982): 187–203;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Helmholz, R.H., “Crime, Compurgation, and the Courts of the Medieval Church,” Law and History Review 1 (1983): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Fortescue's figures, see Charles, Plummer, ed., The Governance of England (Oxford, 1885), p. 141.Google Scholar

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7. See Aelred's, De sanctis ecclesiae Haugustaldensis in The Priory of Hexham, ed. Raine, James, 2 vols. (Durham, 1864–1865), 1:174Google Scholar: “Hinc est quod sancti patres nostri, quorum reliquiarum praesentia gloriamur, antiqua miracula novis cumulare non cessant.”

8. Criminals' petitions for immunity candidly and eagerly conceded guilt, named accomplices, specified the weapon, and detailed the nature and location of the victim's wounds, as if the admissions procedures were conducted in the confessional. Sanctuarium Dunelmense in Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Beverlacense, ed. James Raine (London, 1837), pp. 3–90.Google Scholar Also see Forster, R.H., “Notes on Durham and other North-county Sanctuaries,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association, n.s. 11 (1905): 120–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Journals of the House of Commons 1 (1566): 73–74.Google Scholar For a specimen of early episcopal solicitude for the fate of fugitive debtors, see Augustine's Epistola 150 in Patrologia cursus completus (Series Latina), ed. J.P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–1885) 33:430Google Scholar. On the early church's liability, consult Bingham, Joseph, Origines Ecclesiasticae, 2 vols. (London, 1708–1711) 2:571Google Scholar. Beaulieu's requests to Cromwell were collected by Hope, W.H. St. John and Brakspear, Harold and printed in “The Cistercian Abbey of Beaulieu in the County of Southampton,” The Archaeological Journal, 2d ser. 13 (1906): 176–178.Google Scholar Five years before the petition, if not previous to that as well, Beaulieu was full and forced to turn refugees away, Public Record Office, K.B. 27, 1086, memb. 4.

10. Statutes of the Realm, 11 vols. (London, 1810–1828), 3:551Google Scholar (29 Henry VIII, chap. 19); 3:555 (27 Henry VIII, c. 24); and 3:756–758 (32 Henry VIII, c. 12).

11. Elton, G.R., Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 399–400Google Scholar. Also see Elton's, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973) pp. 136–138.Google Scholar

12. Brewer, J.S., Gairdner, J., and Brodie, R.H., eds. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 21 vols. (London, 1862–1932), 10:93Google Scholar. Another note to himself, apparently made in preparation for a conference with the king shows Cromwell impatiently waiting, or pressing, for “a determination of the sanctuaries”; transcribed from British Museum, Titus MS B.I. 476 in Letters and Papers, eds. Brewer et al. 15:180, dated 03 1540.Google Scholar

13. Thornley, , “Destruction,” p. 203.Google Scholar

14. Gairdner, J., ed. The Paston Letters, 6 vols. (New York, 1965), 6:131.Google Scholar

15. Hemmant, M., ed., Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber before all the Justices of England, vol. 2 (London, 1948), pp. 115–124Google Scholar. The matter was removed to King's Bench, yet the reports are printed here in full.

16. If the requirement for judicial precedence, or allowance at the Eyre, is abstracted from the inadequacies of the Culham case—and some justices may have so desired—the verdict would appear more radical. But it is, I suspect, more appropriate to place the additional requirement in the context of the Stafford plea, the problematic character of the abbot's evidence, and the special circumstances that caused the king himself to press for conviction. Before taking sanctuary at Culham, Stafford had entered sanctuary at Colchester, only to leave when rebellion in Worcestershire furnished a second opportunity to defeat the Tudors. See Denys, Hay, ed., The “Anglica Historia ” of Polydore Vergil, AD. 1485–1537, (London, 1950), p. 12;Google Scholar and Williams, C.H., “The Rebellion of Humphrey Stafford in 1486,” English Historical Review 43 (1928): 186–187.Google Scholar

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18. Sylvester, Richard S., ed. The History of King Richard III (New Haven, 1963).Google Scholar For earlier complaints, Rotuli, Parliamentorum et Petitiones, 6 vols. (London, 1767–1777), 3:503–504 (1402); 4:291 (1425).Google Scholar

19. Compare Thomas, A.H. and Thornley, I. D., eds., The Great Chronicle of London (London, 1938), p. 230Google Scholar; and Historiae Croylandensis continuatio in Rerum anglicarum scriptorum veterum, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1684), 3: 566.Google Scholar

20. More, Richard III, p. 30. The Latin Historia Richardi, perhaps composed simultaneously, adds for clarification, “ubi dubiis aut afihicitis rebus, pendente adhuc victoria sint in tuto” (so that they may be safe while the outcome is in doubt).

21. Ibid., pp. 27–28.

22. Objectiones, Longleat MS. 38, for example, fols. 18r–21v.

23. Ibid., For passages summarized, see fols. 95v–99v, 124r, 130r–132r, 216, 231r–232r.

24. For Breton restrictions, see Haut-Jussé, Barthélémy A. Pocquet de, Les papes et les ducs de Bretagne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1928), 2:647, 720Google Scholar. For Ebesham and the manuscript of the Objectiones, consult Doyle, A. I., “The Work of a Late Fifteenth-Century English Scribe, William Ebesham,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 39 (1957): 319–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Thornley, , “Destruction,” pp. 196–197Google Scholar; and The Paston Letters 5:1–2. I am grateful to Miss Jane Fowles of Longleat House for information on the Objectiones composition, culled from Lawrence Tanner's unpublished notes of 1933. For “diuturna consuetudo,” Objectiones, fols. 141r–142v; and for emphasis on Westminster's charters, inter alia, fols. 59r, 194, and especially 228r. Abbot Estney's appearance before the council, “les seigniors spirituels and les Juges,” is chronicled in Les Reports des Cases (Year Books), ed. J. Maynard, Hilary, 1 Henry VII, plea 11, p. 10.Google Scholar

25. James, Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, vol. 1 (London, 1861), pp. 94–95.Google Scholar

26. Compare Kempe, Alfred John, Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of Saint Martin-le-Grand, London (London, 1825), pp. 148–150,Google Scholar with Innocent's bull, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. David Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), 3:622–623.Google Scholar

27. Roskell, J.S., “Sir William Oldhall, Speaker in the Parliament of 1450–1451,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 5 (1961): 104–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. See for example the orders that apparently were distributed to “every shire, citie, borough, and franchise,” soon after Henry VII acquired the crown, in York Civic Records, ed. Angelo Raine, vol. 1 (Wakefield, 1939), pp. 139–140.Google Scholar Also note Pugh, Ralph B., Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1968);Google Scholar and Foucault, Michel, Surveiller et punir (Paris, 1975), p. 233,Google Scholar with reference to procedures, “à l'extérieur de l'appareil judiciaire,” for redistributing and quarantining criminals.

29. The remark, however, was composed six decades after Henry's death. Grafton, Richard, Chronicle or History of England, 2 vols. (London, 1809) 2:225.Google Scholar Also see Statutes of the Realm, 2:654–655 (19 Henry VII, c. 10); “Gravamina prelatorum et cleri,” in Rotuli Parliamentorum hactenus inediti, eds. H.G. Richardson and George Sayles (London, 1935), p. 107,Google Scholar item 4, for earlier controversy about fines; and see Pugh, , Imprisonment, pp. 218–237.Google Scholar For cases mentioned here, Westlake, Herbert Francis, Westminster Abbey, 2 vols. (London, 1923), 1:177Google Scholar (Islip); Bayne, C.G. and Dunham, William H., eds., Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII (London, 1958),Google Scholar p. cxlix (King); Reports of Sir John Spelman, 1:122 (Saint Alban's); and Year Books, Hilary, 9 Henry VII, plea 15, p. 20 (Saint John of Jerusalem).

30. The grant was copied into Morton's register, fifteen folios after the papal concessions, Lambeth Palace Library manuscript, Registers of the Archbishops of Canterbury, 1486–1500, fol. 20r.

31. Objectiones, fol.61.

32. Ibid., fol. 62r.

33. Robert, Keilwey, ed., Reports d'ascuns cases (London, 1688), fol. 189;Google Scholar and Ives, , “Crime,” pp. 298–299.Google Scholar

34. Bracton, Henry de, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae, ed. Woodbine, George E., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1968), 2:383Google Scholar. For a discussion of similar cooperation on the continent, Bras, Gabriel le, “Le privilège de clergie en France dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Age,” Journal des savants, n.s. 20 (1922): 163–170.Google Scholar

35. Statutes of the Realm, 3:332–34 (22 Henry VIII, chap. 14).