“The Festival of St. Mary Magdalen, July 22nd, in the first year of Henry V., A. D. 1413, brings to us the recollection of a very ancient and curious Saxon law, namely that of Sanctuary: by which privilege, if a person accused of any crime,--excepting Treason and Sacrilege, in which the Crown and the Church were too nearly concerned,--had fled to any Church, or Church-Yard, and within forty days after went before the Coroner, made a full confession of his crime, and took the oath provided in that case, that he would quit the realm, and never return again, without leave of the King, his life should be safe. At the taking of this oath he was brought to the Church-door, where being branded with an A, signifying Abjured, upon the brawn of the thumb of his right hand, a port was then assigned him, from which he was to leave the realm, and to which he was to make all speed, holding a cross in his hand, and not turning out of the highway, either to the right hand or the left. At this port he was diligently to seek for passage, waiting there but one ebb and flood, if he could immediately procure it; and if not, he was to go every day into the sea up to his knees, essaying to pass over. If this could not be accomplished within forty days, he was again to put himself into Sanctuary. These privileges of Sanctuary and Abjuration were taken away in 1624, by the Statute of the 21st of James I., chapter 28: but you will find the ancient law on these points fully set forth in William Rastall’s ‘_Collection in English of the Statutes now in force_,’ London, 1594, folio, under their proper titles, folios 2 a, 399 b, and also in Andrew Horne’s learned work of ‘_La Somme, appellé Mirroir des Justices_,’ London, 1624, 12mo., chapter 1, section xiii., page 102. Rastall, you will recollect, was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Queen Mary; and Horne was a Lawyer of great erudition and eminence, in the reigns of the First and Second Edwards.