October 12, 2024 • 15 mins
(Host: Samantha) Not everyone who received the death penalty in medieval England was actually killed. Picking up where she left off in our last episode, Samantha explores two more methods of avoiding execution: gaining sanctuary and buying pardons.
For further reading suggestions and more, please visit: https://www.footnotinghistory.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Tune in to Footnoting History today to hear the conclusion
of my two-part episode about how to avoid the hangman’s noose in medieval England.
The strategies I’ll be going over today are gaining sanctuary and buying pardons.
(00:25):
Hello and welcome to Footnoting History. I’m your host, Sam,
and I’ll be talking to you about how not to die in medieval England.
In my last episode, I told you that people could avoid death by pretending to be a
member of the clergy or by running away and becoming an outlaw. But what if you
couldn’t read and did not want to embrace the precarious life on the run? Well,
(00:47):
another, and more palatable option (my personal favorite of the four) was to take sanctuary.
The rules around sanctuary varied a little bit from place to place but they existed
throughout western Christendom. And in the end the idea of sanctuary was exported to
Latin America where these rules lasted into the nineteenth century. The basic idea here was that
(01:09):
the Christian God was a merciful God and that the Church had the ability to absolve a person
of any sin. The Church should, therefore, also have the ability to protect faithful Christians,
including by preserving their lives. And that is part of the reason why throughout Europe,
churches offered protection for people sentenced to death.
(01:30):
There were always rules surrounding sanctuary. Those rules varied from realm to realm. They
also changed over time. Generally speaking, the word sanctuary comes from the Latin “sanctus”
or holy – so sanctuaries were always holy sites – they could be churches, cathedrals,
monasteries, or even shrines depending on the specific accepted norms in any given place.
(01:54):
The types of people who could claim sanctuary also varied in accordance with local norms,
but they invariably included people who had been sentenced to death.
The first time we get a clear picture of sanctuary in England is in the thirteenth century – this is
right around the time that the laws of felony were becoming more solidified and that the
(02:15):
death penalty was starting to be assigned more routinely. In the earliest examples
we can find the rules of sanctuary centered on the parish church. You might wonder how
somebody could get to a church, but I assure you it did happen from time to time. Some escaped to
the church before they were even arrested or tried. But that wasn’t the last chance. I’ve
(02:38):
come across at least one instance in which a convict was accidentally on-purpose lead
through a church yard during the procession from the jail to the gallows at which point
he took to the church and was saved from the fate that would have awaited him otherwise.
Anyone who was accused of a felony and who got to a church was allowed to stay there for 40
days. During this time, he or she could not be taken by the church authorities. The records,
(03:04):
however, also dictate that once a felon had taken church (and that’s how it appears in
the records as taking church) the men of the parish and of the nearest four parishes were
responsible for keeping watch over the church so that the suspect did not escape. If anyone did
escape after taking sanctuary, those parishes could be fined for allowing an escape. After
(03:26):
40 days the felon had two choices –either they could leave the church and face trial,
or they could confess to the crime with a coroner and abjure the realm (and if you’d like to learn
more about coroners and their multifaceted work you can listen to my previous episode about them).
Felons who chose to leave would make an oath before the coroner that they would leave England
(03:49):
and never return. They would then be escorted to the nearest port city and expected to board
a ship (most likely headed for France) and then never return. Or at least that’s the
theory. But there certainly were felons who never left, there were others who did return,
and many of those who did return, managed to secure a pardon in the meantime.
(04:10):
Once someone abjured the realm they were treated like any other convicted felon because of their
confession (even if they had never actually gone to trial). If they were captured within
the realm they were supposed to be taken before a judge. At that point they were
given the opportunity to defend their presence in the realm but unless they could produce a pardon
they would automatically be sentenced to death.
(04:33):
This form of sanctuary (which we can think of as the parish sanctuary system) was the standard
in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But after the Black Death this system
started to falter and fewer and fewer people made use of parish sanctuaries. Eventually,
a new system of sanctuary, which revolved around larger ecclesiastical establishments
(04:55):
including monasteries, cathedrals and collegiate churches, began to take its
place. These larger ecclesiastical institutions possessed precincts which you can think of as
land that was not within the jurisdiction of the surrounding secular authorities. These precincts
could include a lot of land. They could include cottages, places to live. They could also include
(05:16):
shops and places to buy food. And so they were in a much better position than a parish church
to sustain people over a long period of time – but they were also much more widely dispersed
so they would not have been readily available to anyone who needed them and the people who
had the resources to reach sanctuaries in this later system were disproportionately wealthy.
(05:41):
The process of taking sanctuary also changed along with the location. After the middle of
the fourteenth century, a person who wanted to claim sanctuary would enter the central religious
building, ring the bell, and make a confession to a member of the clergy. They would then swear
to maintain good behavior and relinquish all of their weapons (except for a knife because knives
(06:02):
were necessary to eat and carve meat and so it was just accepted that everybody would have a knife).
At that point they would become a “sanctuary man” or (more rarely) as “sanctuary woman.”
Once they gained the sanctuary in this way, the sanctuary man or sanctuary woman was not
allowed to leave the boundaries of the precinct. And we have evidence that these boundaries were
(06:24):
rigorously enforced. The collegiate Church of St. Martin Le Grand, which is situated in London right
near what is now St. Paul’s Tube stop, was one of the recognized sanctuaries. There was, it seems,
a tavern called the Bull’s Head which had a back wall that ran along the sanctuary boundary. And
(06:44):
we have surviving stories about sanctuary men who would apparently go into the back room of
the tavern (which was known as the sanctuary parlor) to get a drink. According to testimony
from the sixteenth century, it seems that as long as they kept a hand along that back wall,
sanctuary men and women were still considered to be within the sanctuary and could not be
(07:06):
arrested. However, if they left that wall and moved further into the parlor,
they were no longer in sanctuary And there were dozens of men who were arrested in that
particular parlor – either because they should not have visited it at all or because they had
wandered too far. I kind of envision local officials (the beadles probably) regularly
(07:27):
stopping by the parlor while on patrol, to see if anyone had broken contact with the wall.
Many of those who claimed sanctuary were people with resources. And for them,
the main goal was to buy some time to organize a defense. So often we’ll see
stories about two noblemen who got into a dispute. When one of them ended up dead,
(07:47):
the other one would flee to the nearest sanctuary. He could then stay there while
his family or his friends or even his servants liquidated some assets and approached the king
with a big pile of money to buy a pardon. Then after an average of 18 months the man
could take his pardon and go back to his normal life. In theory after they got their pardon,
there was no lingering no stain on their character and they could become one of the local justices
(08:12):
of the peace or even serve in Parliament. That said we also have records of people who stayed
in the sanctuaries for twenty or more years, so this could become a permanent safe haven.
While the original point of sanctuary, the original intention was to protect those who would
otherwise lose their lives, we can see that use of sanctuary expanded over time. We can see moments,
(08:35):
for example, when people treated the local churches and the larger sanctuaries as a
place to receive protection from all kinds of threats (even from angry neighbors). In
the later period there were even some people who entered the sanctuary rather than going
to debtor’s prison (which was only starting to become a normalized thing in the fifteenth
century as this new kind of sanctuary system, this large sanctuary system was starting to emerge).
(09:01):
During the Wars of the Roses, which extended from 1455 to 1487, political
refugees also began to take sanctuary. And if you want to learn more the Wars of the Roses,
I would highly recommend that you take a look at some of Christine’s past episodes. The most famous
example of somebody taking sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses was Elizabeth Woodville – Edward
(09:24):
IV’s queen who took to sanctuary not once but twice – the first time when her husband was
temporarily deposed and again when her husband died. When Henry Tudor came to power in 1485,
he actively encouraged the growth of sanctuary as a symbol of resistance to tyranny. His emphasis
on sanctuary can, in many ways, be seen as a form of propaganda to form up his rule, it’s intended
(09:49):
to create this contrast between the new king who encourages people to take sanctuary and be safe,
and Richard III who had been accused of trying to break sanctuary on multiple occasions.
When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, however, the sanctuaries which were housed
within them and this legal mechanism to buy time to build a defense disappeared. It appears that
(10:12):
this loss was an unintentional one. In the 1540s, there was some legislation introduced
that even tried to create a new secular form of sanctuary by setting up sanctuaries in 8
cities. These sanctuaries would effectively be the same as the monastic ones – but they
would be an area where people could live until such a time as they could gain a pardon. The
(10:34):
effort never really took off though in part because there weren’t a lot of cities that
were eager to host sanctuaries. So after 1540 sanctuary effectively disappeared the English
legal procedure. And it ended pretty abruptly. When the biggest sanctuary in the realm (the one
at Westminster) was formally dissolved, there were still 90 sanctuary men residing there.
(10:56):
While there were some men who claimed sanctuary or left the country permanently,
for many the ultimate goal was to buy for time for a pardon. Similarly,
those who claimed benefit of clergy or those who became outlaws could also sue
for a royal pardon and return to their normal lives. Which brings me, of course,
to my fourth and final method for avoiding execution, which was getting a royal pardon.
(11:21):
While we tend to imagine pardons as a rare thing, available only to the elite and the uber wealthy,
the fact of the matter is that they were a lot more common than you think. Over the
course of the fourteenth century the English royal chancery issued approximately 38,000
surviving letters of pardon. And there were likely more that do not survive.
(11:42):
We don’t know why all of these pardons were issued partially because many of them were
granted following in person requests (as opposed to written ones) – which means that we don’t
have any surviving records of the request or why the pardon was being granted. There are
some pardons that were granted because they were recommended by the trial judge – many of
(12:04):
these pardons were issued “de cursu” which means that the chancery issued them on the
king’s behalf rather than though the mercy of the king himself (which is “de gracia”). So,
if it’s just issued by the king’s courts, it’s “de cursu,” if it’s the king, it’s “de gracia.”
Of the surviving written appeals to the king, many were requested after the petitioner had
already been outlawed and many of those claimed innocence. A surprising number,
(12:29):
however, admitted to guilt and begged for the king to show mercy.
It’s also worth observing that all of the surviving petitions sent to the king asking
for a pardon from the fourteenth century onward follow a standard format and often use formulaic
phrases. This level of consistency suggests these petitions were drafted by hired lawyers,
(12:51):
whose expertise would have allowed people who did not have direct contact with the court to appeal
for assistance. That said, the poor would not have been able to submit petitions which would
have cost the lawyer’s fee plus the fee charged by the royal court which was 18s 4d. (which is
approximately the price of a good horse or two cows, so it’s a very significant amount of money).
(13:15):
Those who could not afford to pay this fee could try to get a message to the king through an
intercessor. Famously, English queens often gained popularity by serving as an intercessor with their
husbands to appeal for the good of the people. Often the queens’ appeals were theatrically
staged and they were designed to remind people of the Virgin Mary, who would, supposedly, intervene
(13:37):
on behalf of sinners on the day of judgment. Military commanders and high-ranking military
officials could also serve as intercessors, which meant knowing the right people could constitute
your get out of jail free card. All of this is designed as a giant PR stunt. The king can’t
just grant blanket pardons to everybody who asks because if he does that, there will be total chaos
(14:01):
and the king’s job is to ensure that justice is being done. But if he does it on account of
his noble queen who is soft-hearted and cares for the people, this makes both of them look better.
On the whole we get the impression that the king was happy to grant pardons to
people who could afford to pay. Those who could afford to pay something but
(14:22):
not as much might purchase fake pardons – but the process of counterfeiting pardons
was itself a treasonable offense and could be punished by execution.
The power to issue pardons could help make up for deficiencies in the law and
in court procedure by allowing for mercy to be meted out. I would argue that mercy was,
in fact, an intrinsic part of the law in medieval England. If you take one
(14:46):
thing away from this podcast I hope it will be perhaps that the Middle
Ages were not quite as blood thirsty and unforgiving a time as you might imagine.
And on that note I will be signing off once again. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and
would like to support our podcast, check out our website www.footnoinghistory.com where you
(15:07):
will find links to all of our episodes complete with bibliographies. And if you have a topic you
want to hear about, let us know what it is and maybe one of us will be up for taking on the
challenge. And until next time remember that the best stories are always in the footnotes!
Tune in to Footnoting History today to hear the conclusion
of my two-part episode about how to avoid the hangman’s noose in medieval England.
The strategies I’ll be going over today are gaining sanctuary and buying pardons.
(00:25):
Hello and welcome to Footnoting History. I’m your host, Sam,
and I’ll be talking to you about how not to die in medieval England.
In my last episode, I told you that people could avoid death by pretending to be a
member of the clergy or by running away and becoming an outlaw. But what if you
couldn’t read and did not want to embrace the precarious life on the run? Well,
(00:47):
another, and more palatable option (my personal favorite of the four) was to take sanctuary.
The rules around sanctuary varied a little bit from place to place but they existed
throughout western Christendom. And in the end the idea of sanctuary was exported to
Latin America where these rules lasted into the nineteenth century. The basic idea here was that
(01:09):
the Christian God was a merciful God and that the Church had the ability to absolve a person
of any sin. The Church should, therefore, also have the ability to protect faithful Christians,
including by preserving their lives. And that is part of the reason why throughout Europe,
churches offered protection for people sentenced to death.
(01:30):
There were always rules surrounding sanctuary. Those rules varied from realm to realm. They
also changed over time. Generally speaking, the word sanctuary comes from the Latin “sanctus”
or holy – so sanctuaries were always holy sites – they could be churches, cathedrals,
monasteries, or even shrines depending on the specific accepted norms in any given place.
(01:54):
The types of people who could claim sanctuary also varied in accordance with local norms,
but they invariably included people who had been sentenced to death.
The first time we get a clear picture of sanctuary in England is in the thirteenth century – this is
right around the time that the laws of felony were becoming more solidified and that the
(02:15):
death penalty was starting to be assigned more routinely. In the earliest examples
we can find the rules of sanctuary centered on the parish church. You might wonder how
somebody could get to a church, but I assure you it did happen from time to time. Some escaped to
the church before they were even arrested or tried. But that wasn’t the last chance. I’ve
(02:38):
come across at least one instance in which a convict was accidentally on-purpose lead
through a church yard during the procession from the jail to the gallows at which point
he took to the church and was saved from the fate that would have awaited him otherwise.
Anyone who was accused of a felony and who got to a church was allowed to stay there for 40
days. During this time, he or she could not be taken by the church authorities. The records,
(03:04):
however, also dictate that once a felon had taken church (and that’s how it appears in
the records as taking church) the men of the parish and of the nearest four parishes were
responsible for keeping watch over the church so that the suspect did not escape. If anyone did
escape after taking sanctuary, those parishes could be fined for allowing an escape. After
(03:26):
40 days the felon had two choices –either they could leave the church and face trial,
or they could confess to the crime with a coroner and abjure the realm (and if you’d like to learn
more about coroners and their multifaceted work you can listen to my previous episode about them).
Felons who chose to leave would make an oath before the coroner that they would leave England
(03:49):
and never return. They would then be escorted to the nearest port city and expected to board
a ship (most likely headed for France) and then never return. Or at least that’s the
theory. But there certainly were felons who never left, there were others who did return,
and many of those who did return, managed to secure a pardon in the meantime.
(04:10):
Once someone abjured the realm they were treated like any other convicted felon because of their
confession (even if they had never actually gone to trial). If they were captured within
the realm they were supposed to be taken before a judge. At that point they were
given the opportunity to defend their presence in the realm but unless they could produce a pardon
they would automatically be sentenced to death.
(04:33):
This form of sanctuary (which we can think of as the parish sanctuary system) was the standard
in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But after the Black Death this system
started to falter and fewer and fewer people made use of parish sanctuaries. Eventually,
a new system of sanctuary, which revolved around larger ecclesiastical establishments
(04:55):
including monasteries, cathedrals and collegiate churches, began to take its
place. These larger ecclesiastical institutions possessed precincts which you can think of as
land that was not within the jurisdiction of the surrounding secular authorities. These precincts
could include a lot of land. They could include cottages, places to live. They could also include
(05:16):
shops and places to buy food. And so they were in a much better position than a parish church
to sustain people over a long period of time – but they were also much more widely dispersed
so they would not have been readily available to anyone who needed them and the people who
had the resources to reach sanctuaries in this later system were disproportionately wealthy.
(05:41):
The process of taking sanctuary also changed along with the location. After the middle of
the fourteenth century, a person who wanted to claim sanctuary would enter the central religious
building, ring the bell, and make a confession to a member of the clergy. They would then swear
to maintain good behavior and relinquish all of their weapons (except for a knife because knives
(06:02):
were necessary to eat and carve meat and so it was just accepted that everybody would have a knife).
At that point they would become a “sanctuary man” or (more rarely) as “sanctuary woman.”
Once they gained the sanctuary in this way, the sanctuary man or sanctuary woman was not
allowed to leave the boundaries of the precinct. And we have evidence that these boundaries were
(06:24):
rigorously enforced. The collegiate Church of St. Martin Le Grand, which is situated in London right
near what is now St. Paul’s Tube stop, was one of the recognized sanctuaries. There was, it seems,
a tavern called the Bull’s Head which had a back wall that ran along the sanctuary boundary. And
(06:44):
we have surviving stories about sanctuary men who would apparently go into the back room of
the tavern (which was known as the sanctuary parlor) to get a drink. According to testimony
from the sixteenth century, it seems that as long as they kept a hand along that back wall,
sanctuary men and women were still considered to be within the sanctuary and could not be
(07:06):
arrested. However, if they left that wall and moved further into the parlor,
they were no longer in sanctuary And there were dozens of men who were arrested in that
particular parlor – either because they should not have visited it at all or because they had
wandered too far. I kind of envision local officials (the beadles probably) regularly
(07:27):
stopping by the parlor while on patrol, to see if anyone had broken contact with the wall.
Many of those who claimed sanctuary were people with resources. And for them,
the main goal was to buy some time to organize a defense. So often we’ll see
stories about two noblemen who got into a dispute. When one of them ended up dead,
(07:47):
the other one would flee to the nearest sanctuary. He could then stay there while
his family or his friends or even his servants liquidated some assets and approached the king
with a big pile of money to buy a pardon. Then after an average of 18 months the man
could take his pardon and go back to his normal life. In theory after they got their pardon,
there was no lingering no stain on their character and they could become one of the local justices
(08:12):
of the peace or even serve in Parliament. That said we also have records of people who stayed
in the sanctuaries for twenty or more years, so this could become a permanent safe haven.
While the original point of sanctuary, the original intention was to protect those who would
otherwise lose their lives, we can see that use of sanctuary expanded over time. We can see moments,
(08:35):
for example, when people treated the local churches and the larger sanctuaries as a
place to receive protection from all kinds of threats (even from angry neighbors). In
the later period there were even some people who entered the sanctuary rather than going
to debtor’s prison (which was only starting to become a normalized thing in the fifteenth
century as this new kind of sanctuary system, this large sanctuary system was starting to emerge).
(09:01):
During the Wars of the Roses, which extended from 1455 to 1487, political
refugees also began to take sanctuary. And if you want to learn more the Wars of the Roses,
I would highly recommend that you take a look at some of Christine’s past episodes. The most famous
example of somebody taking sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses was Elizabeth Woodville – Edward
(09:24):
IV’s queen who took to sanctuary not once but twice – the first time when her husband was
temporarily deposed and again when her husband died. When Henry Tudor came to power in 1485,
he actively encouraged the growth of sanctuary as a symbol of resistance to tyranny. His emphasis
on sanctuary can, in many ways, be seen as a form of propaganda to form up his rule, it’s intended
(09:49):
to create this contrast between the new king who encourages people to take sanctuary and be safe,
and Richard III who had been accused of trying to break sanctuary on multiple occasions.
When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, however, the sanctuaries which were housed
within them and this legal mechanism to buy time to build a defense disappeared. It appears that
(10:12):
this loss was an unintentional one. In the 1540s, there was some legislation introduced
that even tried to create a new secular form of sanctuary by setting up sanctuaries in 8
cities. These sanctuaries would effectively be the same as the monastic ones – but they
would be an area where people could live until such a time as they could gain a pardon. The
(10:34):
effort never really took off though in part because there weren’t a lot of cities that
were eager to host sanctuaries. So after 1540 sanctuary effectively disappeared the English
legal procedure. And it ended pretty abruptly. When the biggest sanctuary in the realm (the one
at Westminster) was formally dissolved, there were still 90 sanctuary men residing there.
(10:56):
While there were some men who claimed sanctuary or left the country permanently,
for many the ultimate goal was to buy for time for a pardon. Similarly,
those who claimed benefit of clergy or those who became outlaws could also sue
for a royal pardon and return to their normal lives. Which brings me, of course,
to my fourth and final method for avoiding execution, which was getting a royal pardon.
(11:21):
While we tend to imagine pardons as a rare thing, available only to the elite and the uber wealthy,
the fact of the matter is that they were a lot more common than you think. Over the
course of the fourteenth century the English royal chancery issued approximately 38,000
surviving letters of pardon. And there were likely more that do not survive.
(11:42):
We don’t know why all of these pardons were issued partially because many of them were
granted following in person requests (as opposed to written ones) – which means that we don’t
have any surviving records of the request or why the pardon was being granted. There are
some pardons that were granted because they were recommended by the trial judge – many of
(12:04):
these pardons were issued “de cursu” which means that the chancery issued them on the
king’s behalf rather than though the mercy of the king himself (which is “de gracia”). So,
if it’s just issued by the king’s courts, it’s “de cursu,” if it’s the king, it’s “de gracia.”
Of the surviving written appeals to the king, many were requested after the petitioner had
already been outlawed and many of those claimed innocence. A surprising number,
(12:29):
however, admitted to guilt and begged for the king to show mercy.
It’s also worth observing that all of the surviving petitions sent to the king asking
for a pardon from the fourteenth century onward follow a standard format and often use formulaic
phrases. This level of consistency suggests these petitions were drafted by hired lawyers,
(12:51):
whose expertise would have allowed people who did not have direct contact with the court to appeal
for assistance. That said, the poor would not have been able to submit petitions which would
have cost the lawyer’s fee plus the fee charged by the royal court which was 18s 4d. (which is
approximately the price of a good horse or two cows, so it’s a very significant amount of money).
(13:15):
Those who could not afford to pay this fee could try to get a message to the king through an
intercessor. Famously, English queens often gained popularity by serving as an intercessor with their
husbands to appeal for the good of the people. Often the queens’ appeals were theatrically
staged and they were designed to remind people of the Virgin Mary, who would, supposedly, intervene
(13:37):
on behalf of sinners on the day of judgment. Military commanders and high-ranking military
officials could also serve as intercessors, which meant knowing the right people could constitute
your get out of jail free card. All of this is designed as a giant PR stunt. The king can’t
just grant blanket pardons to everybody who asks because if he does that, there will be total chaos
(14:01):
and the king’s job is to ensure that justice is being done. But if he does it on account of
his noble queen who is soft-hearted and cares for the people, this makes both of them look better.
On the whole we get the impression that the king was happy to grant pardons to
people who could afford to pay. Those who could afford to pay something but
(14:22):
not as much might purchase fake pardons – but the process of counterfeiting pardons
was itself a treasonable offense and could be punished by execution.
The power to issue pardons could help make up for deficiencies in the law and
in court procedure by allowing for mercy to be meted out. I would argue that mercy was,
in fact, an intrinsic part of the law in medieval England. If you take one
(14:46):
thing away from this podcast I hope it will be perhaps that the Middle
Ages were not quite as blood thirsty and unforgiving a time as you might imagine.
And on that note I will be signing off once again. If you’ve enjoyed this episode and
would like to support our podcast, check out our website www.footnoinghistory.com where you
(15:07):
will find links to all of our episodes complete with bibliographies. And if you have a topic you
want to hear about, let us know what it is and maybe one of us will be up for taking on the
challenge. And until next time remember that the best stories are always in the footnotes!
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