they steale out, they robbe and reve, and kyll, and come in again as though those places gave them not only a safe garde for the harme they have done, but a license also to doo more.”[220] This privilege endured, however, and even survived the Reformation; but from that hour it was less respected. Lord Chancellor Bacon speaks of the sanctuary of Colnham, near Abingdon, as being considered “insufficient” for traitors, under Henry VII; several political criminals who had taken refuge there, were seized, therefore, and one of them was executed.[221] Sanctuaries were suppressed, legally at least, in the twenty-first year of the reign of James I: “And be it alsoe enacted by the authoritie of this present parliament that no sanctuarie or priviledge {174} of sanctuary shal be hereafter admitted or allowed in any case.”[222] But they lingered on in England as well as on the continent. Cromwell complains, in one of his most famous speeches, of the difficulties his Government sometimes experience on that account when they have to ask from foreign potentates that justice be done. He alludes to the recent assassination of an English messenger, and says: “It is the pleasure of the Pope at any time to tell you that though the man is murdered, yet his murderer has got into the sanctuary.” Another proof that, after the statute of James I, the right of sanctuary did not fall entirely into disuse in England is that it had to be re-abolished in 1697; sanctuaries are to be found even so late as the reign of George I, when the one at St. Peter’s, Westminster, was demolished. With all their penal severity, law and custom still gave other encouragements to malefactors. They often received charters of pardon which the royal chancery willingly granted because they must be paid for, while the Commons unweariedly renewed their complaints against this abuse. The priest, John Crochille, states to the king in parliament that while he was at the Court of Rome he has been outlawed, and was imprisoned on his return. The chancellor has granted him a charter of pardon, but he is “so impoverished that he has not wherewith to pay for the said charter.”[223] Charters were thus given to the innocent for money, and to “common felons and murderers” also, which had two results: the number of brigands increased by reason of their impunity, and men dared not bring the most formidable criminals to justice for fear of seeing them return pardoned and ready to wreak a terrible revenge.