As we emerge from a narrow street bordered with mean little houses, the great church suddenly bursts on our view and we pause to admire its vast yet perfect proportions, its rich carvings, and the multitude of graceful pinnacles. We enter, but the caretaker receives us with little enthusiasm, though at our request he shows us about in a rather reserved manner. A card on the wall explains matters: "Positively no fees to attendants." Our experience has been that such a notice means cash in advance if you are to have the attention you want and which you really need if you are to see and appreciate such a church. We proceed, therefore, to get on a proper footing with our guide, and begin forthwith to learn the history, the architecture, the curiosities and the gossip of Beverley Minster. And the last is not the least interesting, for here, as at Wymondham, was a rector who with the modest salary of four hundred pounds a year had spent many thousands of his own money in restoration and repair of the minster. He had restored the intricate screen and replaced some of the images which had been broken up, yet so cleverly was the toning and coloring done that the newer work could not be distinguished from the old. The St. John from whom the minster took its name was Archbishop of York and founded a church on the present site in the sixth century. He died in 731 and, tradition says, is buried in the minster. But Beverley's most distinguishing historic fact is that it was one of the three "sanctuaries of refuge" in England. Here, by the strange edict of the early church, any criminal who could evade his pursuers might take refuge in the precincts of Beverley Minster and for thirty days be entitled to the protection and hospitality of the monks, after which he was given a passport to sail from the nearest port to some foreign land. We saw the rude stone chair of "refuge" to which no doubt many a gasping scoundrel clung, safe, for the time, from justice by virtue of his ability to outrun his pursuers. One incident is recorded of a "Tailour of York" who had cruelly murdered his wife but who escaped punishment by taking refuge in Beverley. The only penalty inflicted was to brand the criminal on the thumb with a hot iron and to watch him closely until he sailed for France. However, all this was better than being hanged, the penalty freely administered by the civil authorities in those days, and as a consequence Beverley always had a large number of "undesirable citizens" within her borders.