And sanctuary was, as a rule, respected. When Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, went into sanctuary at Westminster, she was unmolested, and might have stayed there all her life had she chosen. Elizabeth Woodville gave birth to her elder boy, “forsaken by her friends and in great penury,” yet in safe keeping. Here she placed the child in his father’s arms on his return. A second time she fled thither when that boy, thirteen years of age, was in the hands of her enemy and in the Tower. She took with her the younger boy, but we all know what happened. Sanctuary was broken. The Archbishops gave their consent to the sacrilege even though they knew, everybody must have known, that the boys would be murdered one after the other. It was the lot of every prince or possible heir to the throne in those times to be murdered or to be slain in battle. Henry the Sixth, Prince Edward, the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Exeter, are all examples instructive enough. Yet the Archbishops yielded. Why? I think it is clear that they dreaded above all things a boy King: above all things they wanted repose for the distracted land. It was a case of choosing between the lives of two innocent boys, or fresh wars, new distractions, which? The violation of sanctuary in this case is remarkable for the opportunity it gave the Duke of Buckingham to attack the whole system of sanctuary. “I dare well avow it, weigh the good that they do with the hurt that cometh of them, and ye shall find it much better to lack both than to have both. And this I say, although they were not abused as they now be, and so long have been, that I fear me they will ever be, while men be afraid to set their hands to the amendment: as though God and St. Peter were the patrons of ungracious living. Now unthrifts riot and run in debt upon the boldness of these places: yea, and rich men run thither with poor men’s goods. There they build, there they spend and bid their creditors go whistle for them. Men’s wives run thither with their husbands’ plate, and say they dare not abide with their husbands for beating. Thieves bring thither their stolen goods, and there live thereon. There devise they new robberies nightly to steal out, they rob, and reave, and kill, and come in again as though those places gave them not only a safeguard for the harm they have done, but a licence also to do more mischief.” It must not be forgotten that Skelton the poet escaped the wrath of Wolsey by taking refuge in the Westminster Sanctuary, where he lived in safety and died unmolested. In the _Italian Relations of England_ (Camden Society), probably written at the end of the fifteenth century, the author bears testimony of the same kind to the evils of sanctuary. Apparently the institution did not exist in Italy.