A priest who took refuge in a church was not obliged to quit England; he swore that he was a priest, and “enjoyed ecclesiastic privilege, according to the praiseworthy custom of the kingdom.”[215] But the church, who accorded to all comers the benefit of sanctuary, reserved to herself the power of removal from it. “In this year (1320), a woman who was named Isabel of Bury, killed the priest of the church of All Saints, near London Wall, and she remained in the same church five days, so that the Bishop of London issued his letter that the church would not save her, wherefore she was brought out of the church to Newgate and was hanged on the third day afterwards.”[216] {172} In those days, when riots and rebellions were not uncommon, the right of sanctuary might be valuable for any one; reformers like Wyclif vainly protested against this exorbitant but useful custom.[217] A bishop even, however sacred his person, might have to spur his horse and fly towards a church to save his head. The Bishop of Exeter tried and failed when Isabella and her son came to overthrow Edward II:[218] “The same day came one Sir Walter de Stapleton, who was Bishop of Exeter, and the king’s treasurer the previous year, riding to his house in Elde Deanes lane to his dinner, and there he was proclaimed traitor; and he seeing that fled on his horse towards the church of St. Paul’s, and was there met and quickly unhorsed, and brought to Cheap, and there he was stripped and his head cut off.” Under Richard III might be seen a queen and a king’s son refuse to quit the sacred enclosure of Westminster, in which their lives were safe, thanks to the sanctity of the place. Sir Thomas More has left in his history of the usurper, the first real history in the national language, a moving picture of the plucky defence of Edward IV’s widow and of the persistent efforts of Richard to snatch the second child of the late king from the abbey. To reiterated demands the queen replied: “In what place coulde I recken him sure, if he be not sure in this the sentuarye whereof was there never tiraunt yet so develish, that durst presume to breake. . . . For soth he hath founden a goodly glose, by whiche that place that may defend a thefe, may not save an innocent.”[219] The “goodly glose” of Richard III consisted simply in having the right of sanctuary abolished. In a speech in favour of {173} the measure, which was aimed especially at the places of refuge of St. Paul’s and Westminster, the Duke of Buckingham is represented by More drawing a very lively as well as an exact picture of the disorders there: “What a rabble of theves, murtherers, and malicious heyghnous traitours, and that in twoo places specyallye. . . . Mens wyves runne thither with theyr housebandes plate, and saye, thei dare not abyde with theyr housebandes for beatinge. Theves bryng thyther theyr stolen goodes, and there lyve thereon. There devise thei newe roberies; nightlye