But the protection of the mighty Roman Church was to be something more than a mere respite for the lesser grades of offenders. In the year 511 a Council of Orleans[228] ordered that criminals who sought refuge in a church or house of a bishop should not be dragged forth from it. Even the slave given up to his master was not to be hurt by him. About a century later Pope Boniface V. (619–625)[229] commanded that none who had taken refuge should be abandoned. The same spirit is found in the _Decretum Gratiani_ compiled in 1151. Pope Innocent III., in a letter written in 1200,[230] ordered that only night robbers, bandits, and persons doing violence within the church should be given up.[231] And this we find reaffirmed by Gregory IX. in the year 1234.[232] In 1261 Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Constitutions[233] expressly forbade that any obstacle should be placed in the way of food being brought to such as were in a sanctuary—so much had the Church increased in power since Alfred’s time—and that any should be molested who, having taken it, had forsworn the country.[234] The exiles to whom this thirteenth-century archbishop alludes were persons who had fled into churches, where they could then claim refuge for forty days.[235] The buildings were watched that no one should escape, and if a man got away the parish was fined. At the end of this period the refugees must surrender,[236] but they might make an oath before the coroner admitting their guilt, and also promising to quit the realm. A road and port of destination were then assigned them,[237] and they might travel thither “with a wooden cross in their hands, barefooted, ungirded, and bareheaded, in their coats only.[238] And,” said the king, “we forbid any one under peril of life and limb to kill them so long as they are on their road pursuing their journey.”[239] But they would forfeit goods and chattels if they had any.[240] Under the masterful tyranny of Henry VIII. it was held that too many British subjects escaped this wise, and it was enacted in 1530[241] that those who had taken sanctuary should not leave the realm, but should be sent to one of the privileged places (if it were not full, which at that time meant if it contained not more than twenty people), there to remain as sanctuary persons for the rest of their lives; and they were also to be branded on the thumb.[242]