sinful to remove fugitives violently from the sanctuary the nearer {160} they were to the inner circle. If they were dragged from the altar or the fridstool, no money atonement was accepted from the abductor, who thus apparently forfeited his life. Describing the several circles around the Hexham sanctuary, Prior Richard, who wrote between 1154 and 1167, says of the inner one: “If any one, moved by a spirit of madness, ventured with diabolical boldness to seize one in the stone chair near the altar which the English call _fridstol_, that is a chair of quiet or peace, or at the shrine of the holy relics, back of the altar, no compensation will be determined for such a glaring sacrilege, no amount of money will serve as an atonement, for it is what the English call _botolos_ (bootless), that is a thing for which there can be no compensation.”[197] [Illustration 33. THE FRIDSTOOL AT HEXHAM ABBEY, NORTHUMBERLAND (NORMAN).] [Illustration 34. THE FRIDSTOOL AT SPROTBOROUGH, YORKSHIRE. _Fourteenth Century._] That same fridstool has been preserved, being not improbably the original episcopal seat of the famous St. Wilfrid, born about 634, the builder of the old church {163} at Hexham, a crypt of which, with some Roman stones used for the walls, is still in existence. Near the fridstool was to be seen a queer, short, stone statue now moved to another place in the church, of a man, with brutal features, “wearing a long coat, buttoned in front from the neck to the waist, having three coils or clumsy ligatures . . . round his ankles; and he holds erect with both hands a staff or club as tall as himself.” A. B. Wright, author of an “Essay towards the history of Hexham,” expresses the opinion that, “it was intended to represent an officer of justice, with his staff and plume, his feet bared and manacled, to show that within the bounds of sanctuary he dared not move towards his design and that there his authority availed him not.”[198] A confirmation of this opinion may be found in the figures carved on the little known but very curious fridstool at Sprotborough, Yorkshire, apparently of the fourteenth century: the fugitive who could not be properly represented seated in the chair, since this would have made it impossible of use, is shown protected and covered by it, while a clumsy and much deteriorated image of some law official, carrying his staff, stands at one of the sides of the chair, but unable to move, being bound to it by a collar or _carcannum_.[199]