“The clergy are they who have the supreme sway over the country, both in peace and war. Amongst other things, they have provided that a number of sacred places in the kingdom should serve for the refuge and escape of all delinquents: and no one, were he a traitor to the crown, or had he practised against the king’s own person, can be taken out of these by force. And a villain of this kind, who, for some great excess that he has committed, has been obliged to take refuge in one of these sacred places, often goes out of it to brawl in the public streets, and then, returning to it, escapes with impunity for every fresh offence he may have been guilty of. This is no detriment to the purses of the priests, nor to the other perpetual sanctuaries: but every church is a sanctuary for 40 days: and, if a thief or a murderer who has taken refuge in one cannot leave it in safety during these 40 days, he gives notice that he wishes to leave England. In which case, being stripped to the shirt by the chief magistrate of the place, and a crucifix placed in his hand, he is conducted along the road to the sea, where, if he finds a passage, he may go with a ‘God speed you!’ But if he should not find one, he walks into the sea up to the throat, and three times asks for a passage: and this is repeated till a ship appears, which comes for him, and so he departs in safety. It is not unamusing to hear, how the women and children lament over the misfortune of these exiles, asking ‘how they can live so destitute out of England’: adding, moreover, that ‘they had better have died than go out of the world,’ as if England were the whole world!” Henry the Seventh in 1483 procured a bull from Pope Innocent the Eighth, which allowed of malefactors being taken out of sanctuary when it was proved that they had left sanctuary in order to commit some mischief. And that if persons suspected of high treason took refuge it should be permitted to the King to station guards at the gates and elsewhere to keep them from going out. Later, in the year 1504, Henry the Seventh procured another bull permitting him to take out persons suspected of high treason. This bull would seem to allow the actual destruction of sanctuary. The procedure in the claim of sanctuary was as follows (the statute being put up in the Custom Hall of the Cinque Ports, Dover), (_Italian Relations_):—