1. See Kesselring, Krista, “Abjuration and its Demise: The Changing Face of Royal Justice in the Tudor Period,” Canadian Journal of History 34 (1999): 345–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Helmholz, R. H., The ius commune in England: Four Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 18–20Google Scholar.

2. On English law and sanctuary, see Baker, J. H., “The English Law of Sanctuary,” Ecclesiastical Law Journal 2 (1990): 8–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Helmholz, , Ius commune, 16–81Google Scholar . On permanent sanctuary, see Thornley, Isobel, “Sanctuary in Medieval London,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 38 (1932–1933): 293–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Thornley, , “The Destruction of Sanctuary,” in Tudor Studies, edited by Seton-Watson, R. W. (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1924), 182–207Google Scholar ; Mazzinghi, Thomas John de', Sanctuaries (Stafford: Halden & Son, 1887)Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/download/sanctuaries00dema/sanctuaries00dema (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Trenholme, Norman MacLaren, The Right of Sanctuary in England: A Study in Institutional History (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1903)Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/download/ rightofsanctuary00trenrich/rightofsanctuary00trenrich (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Cox, J. Charles, The Sanctuaries and Sanctuary Seekers of Mediaeval England (London: G. Allen and Sons, 1911)Google Scholar ; Ives, E. W., “Crime, Sanctuary, and Royal Authority under Henry VIII: The Exemplary Sufferings of the Savage Family,” in On the Laws and Customs of England, edited by Arnold, Morris S. et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 296–320Google Scholar ; Kaufman, Peter Iver, “Henry VII and Sanctuary,” Church History 53 (December 1984): 465–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Kaufman, , The “Polytyque Churche”: Religion and Early Tudor Political Culture, 1485–1516 (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1986), 141–53Google Scholar ; Rosser, Gervase, “Sanctuary and Social Negotiation in Medieval England,” in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, edited by Blair, John and Golding, Brian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 57–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Shoemaker, Karl Blaine, “Sanctuary Law: Changing Conceptions of Wrongdoing and Punishment in Medieval European Law,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2001)Google Scholar.

3. London, London Metropolitan Archives (Corporation of London Record Office) [LMA], Journals of the Court of Common Council, vol. 13, fol. 467r; Kew, The National Archives [TNA], STAC, 2/20/324, m. 5.

4. On St. Martin Le Grand, see Kempe, Alfred John, Historical Notices of the Collegiate Church or Royal Free Chapel and Sanctuary of St. Martin-le-Grand, London (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825), http://books.google.com/books?id=mQ6f37KfHlAC (accessed Dec. 2, 2008)Google Scholar ; Page, William, ed., “Colleges: St. Martin Le Grand,” in A History of the County of London, edited by Page, William (London: Constable, 1909)Google Scholar (hereafter VCH London), 555–66, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=35385 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); Thornley, “Sanctuary”; Thornley, “Destruction of Sanctuary”; Honeybourne, Marjorie B., “The Sanctuary Boundaries and Environs of Westminster Abbey and the College of St. Martin-le-Grand,” Journal of the British Archaeo-logical Association 38 (1932–1933): 316–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Barron, Caroline M., London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 36–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Honeybourne uses the abbot's statement in the 1530s dispute to outline the boundaries of St. Martin's sanctuary, but apparently did not see the other documents discussed here, which outline the contentious nature of the abbot's claim.

5. Most of the residents of the precinct testifying in the 1536–37 Star Chamber dispute about St. Martin Le Grand, discussed below, were aliens (TNA, STAC 2/23/266), although one of those aliens may first have sought refuge in St. Martin's as an accused felon: John Richardson, alien shoemaker and witness in 1536 (ibid., m. 13), had in 1521, already apparently resident in St. Martin's, been pardoned for murder ( Brewer, J. S. et al., eds., Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, 21 vols. and addenda [London: Public Record Office, 1862–1932], 3/1:553, no. 1379/20), http://www.british-history.ac.uk/ report.aspx?compid=91066 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008). See also Gervase Rosser's description of the Westminster sanctuary precinct:Google ScholarMedieval Westminster 1200–1540 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 155–56Google Scholar.

6. See especially Helmholz, Four Studies; and Baker, “English Law.”

7. Helmholz, , Ius commune, 58–81.Google Scholar

8. Helmholz, , Ius commune, 18, 60–61.Google Scholar

9. Helmholz, , Ius commune, 70–72Google Scholar , regarding sanctuary for debt (Helmholz does not mention the use of sanctuary precincts by alien craftsmen, who made up perhaps the largest proportion of the population in both St. Martin Le Grand and in Westminster). Helmholz notes that a fifteenth-century defense of Westminster's sanctuary privilege ingeniously argued that debtors, if punished by imprisonment, could be “tormented in their bodies” through being jailed, and thus that sanctuary was appropriate for debtors as well as criminals. Ibid., 71. See also Hertzler, James R., “The Abuse and Outlawing of Sanctuary for Debt in Seventeenth-Century England,” The Historical Journal 14 (1971): 467–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. “Colleges: St Martin le Grand,” in VCH London, 555–66 ; Thornley, , “Sanctuary,” 299Google Scholar , 301 ; Shoemaker, , “Sanctuary Law,” 215–16, 230–32Google Scholar . On other ecclesiastical peculiars, see Swanson, R. N., “Peculiar Practices: The Jurisdictional Jigsaw of the Pre-Reformation Church,” Midland History 26 (2001): 69–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. On the importance of mercy to contemporary kingship, see Kesselring, Krista, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Mc-Cune, Pat, “Justice, Mercy, and Late Medieval Governance,” Michigan Law Review 89 (1991): 1671–77Google Scholar ; Powell, Edward, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 229–32Google Scholar.

12. Registrum Collegii Sancti Martini Magni, London, Westminster Abbey Muniments [WAM], Book 5, fol. 57v; Henry VI repeated this locution in a writ transcribed by (or recorded at the command of) Richard Caudray, ibid., fol. 70r, and it appears to have entered into a 1475 judgment in the court of Common Pleas as an illustration of the difference between the prepositions “in” and “of”; David J. Seipp, An Index and Paraphrase of Printed Year Book Reports, 1268 — 1535, 2008, http://www.bu.edu/law/seipp/index.html, Seipp 1475.052 (YB Mich 15 Edw. 4 pl. 20).

I have found a number of works useful for thinking through the significance of the sanctuary space of St. Martin Le Grand : Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar ; Certeau, Michel de, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, Steven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110Google Scholar ; Moore, Henrietta L., Space, Text, and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar ; Morrison, Susan Signe, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety and Public Performance (London: Routledge, 2000), 83–105Google Scholar.

13. See, for a graphic representation of the areas outside City jurisdiction, “The Wards c. 1520, including extra-parrochial areas,” in Lobel, Mary S., The City of London From Prehistoric Times to c. 1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar . See also Barron, , London, 35–36Google Scholar ; Tucker, Penny, Law Courts and Lawyers in the City of London, 1300–1550 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 43–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar . Roberta Gilchrist's work on the precinct around Cathedral, Norwich (Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape [Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005]Google Scholar , esp. chapter 9) provides rich insights into monastic precinct boundaries as both symbolic of separation of sacred and secular and as jurisdictional markers.

14. Cf. Grafton, Richard, Chronicle or History of England (London: J. Johnson, 1809), 2:225Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/details/graftonschronic102grafuoft (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Kaufman, , The “Polytyque Churche”, 151–52Google Scholar.

15. Mazzinghi, , Sanctuaries, 26–27Google Scholar ; Shoemaker, , “Sanctuary Law,” 214Google Scholar.

16. This recalls Michel de Certeau's observations on “pedestrian speech acts,” in Practice of Everyday Life, esp. 97–99.

17. WAM, Westminster Abbey Register Book II, fols. 81v-82r. This tenement could, in fact, have been the same as Woodleke's, but on balance it seems more likely that Woodleke's was the tenement just to the north of this one, at this point held by Thomas Feryng alias Frez or Fryse. The lease on that tenement was taken up by Hugh Payne in 1527, and the tenement in which Woodleke lived was also sublet from Payne. Ibid., 23rv, 81v-82r, 234r; Will of Hugh Payne, 7 Oct. 1542, proved 26 June 1543, TNA, PCC, Prob. 11/29, fol. 173r.

18. TNA, STAC 2/20/323, mm. 4, 27.

19. L&P Henry VIII, 10:93, no. 254, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx ?compid=75414 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Elton, G. R., Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 135–38Google Scholar.

20. Or at least so the City's record of the case claims: LMA, Journal 13, fol. 420v. The 1542 will of Hugh Payne, the tenement's leaseholder, however, notes that “the Tenement dothe open into saint Martyns lane In which tenement oon Ffraunces Woodlake doth nowe inhabite and he hathe the same by leasse for certeyn yeres yet tocom.” Will of Hugh Payne, PCC Prob. 11/29, fol. 173r.

21. LMA, Journal 13, fol. 453r.

22. TNA, STAC 2/29/198 and 3/7/68.

23. See Statutes of the Realm, 3:208–9, 297–98; TNA, STAC 2/29/198 and 3/7/68.

24. See for the 1440s and 1450s, WAM Book 5; TNA, C 49/68/15 and C/49/68/21; LMA, Journal 3, fols. 55v-65v; LMA, Letter Book K, fols. 298v-299r; for the late 1520s, LMA, Journal 13, fols. 186v-187r; 194r-196v; TNA, STAC 2/29/198 and 3/7/68.

25. Ralph Twyne, for instance, was only fifty years old, but noted that his knowledge of the customs of the precinct derived not only from his experience but also from his apprentice master, a certain Frist, who was in his eighties when Twyne had been apprenticed to him, and thus that his and Frist's accumulated memory went back about a century. TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 56, 59.

26. Keilway, Robert, Relationes quorundam casuum selectorum ex libris Roberti Keilwey (London: Thomas Wight, 1602; STC 14901), fols. 188–92Google Scholar . Note that judicial concerns related primarily to extensions of the concept of permanent sanctuary to other religious houses such as St. John's Priory rather than to the concept of permanent sanctuary per se; cf . Ives, , “Crime, Sanctuary,” 296–303Google Scholar ; Baker, , “English Law of Sanctuary,” 12Google Scholar ; Baker, , Spelman's Reports, 2:334–46, esp. 345Google Scholar.

27. Statutes of the Realm, 3:508–9, 551.

28. L&P Hen. VIII, 17:396, no. 714/5, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx ?compid=76667 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008). See the concluding section below on St. Martin's postdissolution history.

29. See especially Thornley; the historiography is discussed below.

30. Such an oath is transcribed in Sanctuarium Dunelmense et Sanctuarium Bevercalense (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1837), 111Google Scholar , http://books.google.com/books?id= ySc8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA111&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

31. LMA, Letter Book K, fol. 298v.

32. During the 1520s and 1530s (and possibly before that), the constable of the precinct was a man named Hugh Payne, who also held the leases of many of the properties in the precinct, subletting them to others. TNA, STAC 2/21/121; L&P Hen.VIII, 2/2:1466, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90980 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); 2/2:1469, http:// www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90981 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); 2/2:1471, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90982 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); Westminster Abbey Library, Westminster Abbey Register Book II, 1509–36 (typescript calendar), fols. 15, 23rv, 188v-189r, 234r.

33. L&P Hen. VIII, 4/1:473, no. 1082, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid =91222 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

34. Davis, , Paston Letters, 2:387.Google Scholar

35. In 1402, the Commons presented a bill on behalf of London merchants, who complained about the iniquities, unfaithfulness, and disruptions to proper order in the City of London perpetrated by those living in St. Martin Le Grand. “The inhabitants of the said college often deceitfully send various persons of their affinity to merchants and victuallers of the same city to buy various wares, merchandise and victuals, telling them that they should arrange for the same wares, merchandise and victuals to be brought to the same college in order to have immediate payment there. Yet once these wares, merchandise and victuals have been brought there, the said vendors are unable to recover them to get payment for them.” Given-Wilson, Chris, ed., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England [Prome] (Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005), 3: 503–4Google Scholar.

36. See, for instance, TNA, STAC 2/20/324, mm. 3–8 (quotation at m. 5); see also LMA, Journal 13, fol. 467r.

37. More, Thomas, “The Historie of kyng Rycharde the thirde,” in The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght (London: Rastell, 1557; STC 18076), 47.Google Scholar

38. The examiners were Henry Polsted (a servant of Cromwell) (TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 1; L&P Henry VIII, 10:93, no. 254, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75414 [accessed Dec. 2, 2008], 10:432, no. 1039, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx ?compid=75435 [accessed Dec. 2, 2008]) and John Croke, a Chancery official (TNA, STAC 2/20/323; J. H. Baker, “Croke, John [1489–1554],” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB], ed. Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian [Oxford: OUP, 2004]Google Scholar , http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6732 [accessed May 29, 2007]).

39. TNA, STAC 2/20/324.

40. TNA, STAC 2/20/324, m. 2.

41. See Smail, Daniel Lord, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), esp. 1–8.Google Scholar

42. See, on other graphic representations of the sanctuary , Honeybourne, , “sanctuary Boundaries,” 324–25Google Scholar ; Honeybourne herself creates a map based on the abbot's submission. Ibid., 334.

43. Strype, John, A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, vol. 1, bk. 3 (London: A. Churchill, 1720), 110Google Scholar ; the map is also reproduced in Honeybourne, , “Sanctuary Boundaries,” 333Google Scholar.

44. Honeybourne, , “Sanctuary Boundaries,” 324–25.Google Scholar

45. Deposition of Piers Peterson, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m 2; this was mentioned by a number of deponents, e.g. mm. 11, 15, 18, 33, 37, 41, 43, 55, 60.

46. Rowland Johnson deposed, for instance, that “about saint Leonardis churche and so from thens to the said Roger Wrightis house [the wall] is downe and broken in many places Albe it he saieth that the bound therof may be well Inough perceyued.” TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 12.

47. TNA, STAC 2/20/324, mm. 3–8.

48. Deposition of Piers Peterson, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 6.

49. The 1457 articles survive in a number of forms. The City of London recorded the articles in Letter Book K, fols. 298v-299r (the version transcribed here). A fragment of the regulations is preserved in a document among the Exchequer records: Kew, TNA, E 135/23/49. Kempe transcribes in full a version that likely derives from Lansdowne MS 170 in the British Library, although Kempe does not give his source . Kempe, , Historical Notices, 146–51Google Scholar , this clause 148–49.

50. Deposition of George Isotson, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, mm. 29–30.

51. Deposition of John Smith, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 68. A 1470 letter from John III Paston to his mother confirms Smyth's memory—“the Bysheop of Ely wyth othyr bisheopys ar in Seynt Martyns” (Davis, Norman, ed., The Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, 1976], 564Google Scholar )—although it is also worth noting that John Smith would have been only about nine years old at the time.

52. Witness Raff Twynne spoke of “oone Blande which was a Sentuary man and had contynued in Sentuary xx years and first he dwelt in Coke Aley and afterward in the Brodgate which is nowe called Blandis Aley.” Deposition of Ralph Twynn, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm 57–58; see also deposition of William Baylyn in ibid., m. 64. The name “Bland's Alley” is not recorded until 1525, according to Harben's, Henry A.A Dictionary of London (1918)Google Scholar , http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=63038 (accessed June 6, 2007), suggesting that the alley may well have been named for this semifamous inhabitant.

53. E.g. “Provided also that neither this ordinance and act, nor any other ordinance, statute or act made or to be made in this present parliament, shall extend or be prejudicial or harmful in any way to Robert Stillington, clerk, dean of the king's free chapel of St. Martin Le Grand of London, or to his successors the future deans of the said chapel, or to the said Robert, the dean, and the chapter of the same chapel, with regard to all the privileges, liberties, franchises, rights and customs pertaining to them in any way before the same parliament; or to any person or persons dwelling or living, or who shall dwell or live in future, within the sanctuary and precinct of the same chapel, and particularly within the lane commonly called St. Martins Lane.” Given-Wilson, PROME, 5:507 (emphasis added), see also 5:510, 566; 6:187.

54. L&P Hen. VIII, 4/1:473, no. 1082, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid= 91222 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

55. Subsidy records from a 1536 subsidy collection for Aldersgate ward do indicate that several inhabitants of the precinct who either deposed or were cited by deponents in the 1536–37 enquiry, including Francis Woodleke, were assessed in 1536 (TNA, E 179/144/109). Other pre-dissolution subsidy collection records for Aldersgate ward, however, suggest that this may have been unusual (possibly connected with this dispute). The only 1536–37 witnesses listed in the 1541 subsidy rolls, for instance, are two who clearly lived outside the precinct, Raphael Cornish and John May. TNA, STAC 2/20/323, mm. 10–16 ; Lang, R. G., ed., Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London: 1541 and 1582 (London: London Record Society, 1993), 1–9Google Scholar , http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36095 (accessed June 6, 2007).

56. TNA, STAC 2/20/324, “Declarations of the Abbot of Westminster and the Mayor and Aldermen of London regarding the limits of the sanctuary of Saint Martin-le-Grand,” m.2.

57. Westminster Abbey Register Book II, fol. 64rv.

58. LMA, Journal 13, fol. 420v.

59. TNA, STAC, 2/23/266, m. 5.

60. E.g., TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 8–9, 15.

61. Deposition of Cornelys Hobbard, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 19–20; see also mm. 21, 32, 36, 39, 64.

62. Deposition of John Smith, 28 Dec. 1536, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 67–68.

63. George Hayes testified that the shoemaker's shop “as ffer as he knoweth” is sanctuary, for sanctuary men used to drink there when it was a tavern; and Henry Hall more straightforwardly said that it “hath ben euer vsed as sanctuary.” TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 44, 54–55.

64. The abbot places the boundary of the sanctuary north of “the howses apperteynyng to the Bullis Hedde,” presumably including the sanctuary parlor. TNA, STAC 2/20/324, m. 2.

65. Deposition of Roger Wright, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 7.

66. Deposition of John Curteys, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 26–27. The claimthe mayor and aldermen gave further details about what was probably the same case: “Item In the tyme of Sir James Spencer Mair anno vicesimo Henrici viii^ui [1528–29] Judgement was geven at Newgate ageynst one Griffith who pledyd Seyntuary for that he was forceably takyn oute of a house in the lane of seynt Martyn and the same ffounde no seyntwary by the veredicte of xii men and the prisoner Judged to death and hanged.” TNA, STAC 2/20/324, m. 8.

67. Deposition of Ralph Twyn, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 58.

68. Deposition of Bartholomew Watson, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 5.

69. This phrase is in the summarized version; Deposition of Derek Tynholff, TNA, STAC 2/20/57, m. 9.

70. Ian Arthurson, “Tuchet, James, seventh Baron Audley (c. 1463–1497),” in ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27576 (accessed June 8, 2007).

71. TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 21.

72. By 1600 it was called Bladder Street . Stow, John, A Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, Charles Lethbridge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 313Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/details/ asurveylondon00stowgoog (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

73. Baker, J. H., The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vol. 6, 1485–1558 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 279, 403–7Google Scholar ; Tucker, , Law Courts, 39–40Google Scholar.

74. Baker, , Oxford History, vol. 6, 256–59.Google Scholar

75. Sharpe, Reginald R., ed., Calendar of Letter-Books Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall [CLB] (London: J. E. Francis, 1899–1912), CLBA, 213Google Scholar , http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33031#s11 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); CLBF, 59–60, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33532#s18 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), 64, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33533#s10 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), 89, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33535#s11 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), 106, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=33536#s20 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008); CLBG, 83, 86, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid= 33496 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Barron, , London, 37Google Scholar ; Baker, , Oxford History, vol. 6, 279Google Scholar.

76. WAM Book 5, fol. 48r.

77. Deposition of Roger Wright, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 9.

78. TNA, STAC 2/20/57, m. 13. Interestingly, that chief justice was possibly Sir John Fyneux, named by another deponent as presiding over proceedings at St. Martin's gate (TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 22). Fyneux, chief justice of the King's Bench from 1495 until his death in 1525, is sometimes cited as a judicial opponent of sanctuary privileges (J. H. Baker, “Fyneux, Sir John [d. 1525],” in ODNB, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10261 [accessed September 9, 2008] ; Baker, , Oxford History, vol. 6, 548–49Google Scholar ; Thornley, , “Destruction of Sanctuary,” 198)Google Scholar . Fyneux's objection to some sanctuaries may not have extended, however, to St. Martin's, as St. Martin's met his requirements for a properly constituted sanctuary: royal grant, papal confirmation, and use before legal memory, supported by royal confirmation and use since . Keilway, , Relationes, fols. 188–192Google Scholar , esp. fol. 190.

79. TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 22; STAC 2/23/266, mm. 4, 28, 49.

80. Kempe, , Historical Notices, 117Google Scholar . A prisoner being transported from the Tower to the Marshalsea in 1534 escaped into sanctuary in a parish church . Baker, J. H., ed., The Reports of Sir John Spelman (London: Selden Society, 1977, 1978), 1:52Google Scholar.

81. Deposition of Roger Newes, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 28.

82. Deposition of Derek Tynholf, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 39.

83. “He harde saye that the one halff of hys sayd howse that ys to saye that parte next adioynyng to the sayd gate hathe byn takyn for saynctuary belongyng to saynt Martyns ynsomoche that the olde Abbot of Westm' abowt vi or vii yeres passed dyd viewe yn hys owne persone the sayd howse and dyuerse other howses yn saynt Martyns lane at whiche tyme the sayd Abbot sayed and reported to thys deponent and other there present that the saynttuary dyd extende to a great post on the southe parte of the sayd howse whyche stode some tyme yn a particion withyn the same howse and whiche particion dyd extende northwarde vnto the ende of one olde walle there yet remaynyng.” Deposition of Roger Wright, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 6.

84. Depositions of William Mathew, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 45–50; TNA, STAC 2/20/323, mm. 19–23.

85. In 1474, Robert Purfote enrolled a deed in the City's plea and memoranda rolls (Jones, Philip E., ed., Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 1458–1482 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961], 170)Google Scholar , so presumably his entry into St. Martin's postdated that time. A chancery bill presented 1473–75, however, indicates that around that time Purfote was heavily in debt to William Dalton, merchant of the Calais staple: TNA, C 1/48/144.

86. Deposition of John Marten, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, m. 30.

87. Mathew stated that Purfote was no longer a sanctuary man for the last twenty years of his life, and he died in 1507 or 1508. Deposition of William Mathew, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 45–56; will of Robert Purfote, grocer, dated 20 Sept. 1507, proved 22 Jan. 1508, TNA, PCC Prob. 11/15, fols. 254v-255r.

88. Depositions of William Mathew, TNA, STAC 2/23/266, mm. 45–50; STAC 2/20/323, mm. 20–21.

89. In January 1537 Wright himself mentions that he was living in the house six or seven years before. Deposition of Roger Wright, TNA, STAC 2/20/323, m. 6.

90. LMA, Journal 14, fol. 78r, 89v-90r.

91. Moore, , Space, Text, and Gender, 88–89.Google Scholar

92. Thornley, “Sanctuary”; Thornley, “Destruction of Sanctuary”; Cox, Sanctuaries; E. W. Ives, “Crime, Sanctuary.”

93. E.g., famously Hallam, Henry, History of Europe During the Middle Ages (New York: The Colonial Press, 1899), 3: 34Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/details/historyofeuroped03hall (accessed Dec. 2, 2008): “Under a due administration of justice this privilege [permanent sanctuary] would have been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly consider it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the rapine and tumult of the middle ages the right of sanctuary might as often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime. We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence which prevailed, that there should have been some green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and the persecuted could find refuge.”

94. Hyams, , Rancor, 95.Google Scholar

95. This argument runs through Shoemaker, “Sanctuary Law” (quotation at 25). Similar judgments are made by Hyams, Paul, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), esp. at 95Google Scholar ; Rosenwein, Barbara H., Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privilege of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), esp. at 206Google Scholar.

96. TNA, STAC 2/20/324, “Declarations of the Abbot of Westminster and the Mayor and Aldermen of London regarding the limits of the sanctuary of Saint Martin-le-Grand” (c. 1536), m. 5.

97. Shoemaker, , “Sanctuary Law,” 224–25Google Scholar , 252–53.

98. Kesselring, , Mercy, 52–53Google Scholar ; Hertzler, , “Abuse,” 467–77Google Scholar.

99. Kesselring also notes that Cromwell's views were not mainstream in 1536. “Abjuration,” 357.

100. See above n.11.

101. Scofield, Cora L., “Elizabeth Wydevile in the sanctuary at Westminster, 1470,” The English Historical Review 24 (1909): 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Gauvard, Claude, “De Grâce especial”: Crime, état, et société; en France á la fin du moyen áge, 2 vols. continuously paginated (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991), esp. 940–41Google Scholar , 951–52, also notes the connection between God's peace and French conceptions of royal mercy.

102. Kesselring, , Mercy, 16Google Scholar ; see also Gauvard, , De Gráce especial, 895–96.Google Scholar

103. Kesselring, , Mercy, 17.Google Scholar

104. See Matt. 25:36–44; The Crafte to Lyue Well (Westminster: Wynkyn de Worde, 1505; STC 792), fol. 36rGoogle Scholar ; Phillip Lindley, Miriam Gill, and Alex Moseley, Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, 2001, http://www.le.ac.uk/arthistory/seedcorn/contents.html (accessed Dec. 2, 2008) ; Duffy, Eamon, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 360Google Scholar.

105. Kesselring, , “Abjuration,” 346Google Scholar , 357; Rosser, “Sanctuary.”

106. Kaufman, “Henry VII and Sanctuary.”

107. WAM, Book 5, fol. 49r.

108. Ibid.

109. TNA, C 49/68/21; CLBK, 241–43 ; Thomas, A. H. and Thornley, Isobel, eds., The Great Chronicle of London (London and Aylesbury: George W. Jones, 1938), 195Google Scholar.

110. St. Martin Le Grand offered refuge to Anne Neville, daughter of Warwick the King-maker and later wife of Richard, duke of Gloucester (Pronay, Nicholas and Cox, John, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486 [London: Alan Sutton Publishing for the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986], 133)Google Scholar ; to the Countess of Oxford (Davis, ed., Paston Letters, 1:449); and to John Morton, Bishop of Ely (see above, n.51) . Vergil, Polydore, Three Books of Polydore Vergil's English History, ed. Ellis, Henry (London: John Bowyers Nicols and Son, 1844)Google Scholar , http://www.archive.org/details/polydorevergi100camduoft (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), offers various other examples of people fleeing to sanctuary during the fifteenth-century civil wars for political reasons: e.g.: “yt came to passe that right many, fearing the woorst, partly fled into sayntuary, partly submyttyd themselves to the king [Edward IV]” (130); Edward's own wife went into sanctuary at Westminster upon his flight (133); conversely the duke of Exeter went into sanctuary after Barnet, 1471 (147); and Queen Margaret and her son went into sanctuary at Beaulieu (148). During the reign of Richard III, Edward IV's widow Elizabeth Woodville went into sanctuary at Westminster for the second time (175–78, 210).

111. Vergil, , Three Books of Polydore Vergil's English History, 127.Google Scholar

112. L&P Hen. VIII, 2/2:1466, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90980 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), 2/2:1469, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90981 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008), 2/2:1471, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=90982 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008). I have not (yet) been able to trace the two men, named John Gamlyn and Thomas Porter, or the reasons for the king's support.

113. See above, n.18. Note also that the 1523 Act Concerning the Taking of Apprentices by Strangers (Statutes of the Realm, 3:208–9) allowed St. Martin's exemptions on the employment of alien joiners and glaziers landowners with lands worth one hundred pounds or more yearly.

114. Given-Wilson, , PROME, 5:566.Google Scholar

115. Baker, J. H., An Introduction to English Legal History, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths LexisNexis, 2002), 512–13Google Scholar . Baker finds the practice of sanctuary offensive, the permanent sanctuaries such as St. Martin Le Grand constituting “the greatest evil” of all. Ibid., 512.

116. Rosenwein, , Negotiating Space, 7–8Google Scholar , 111 (quotations at 7). Rosenwein herself, in brief discussion of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English practice of sanctuary, follows Thornley's interpretation that by the Tudor period sanctuary was protected only by a corrupt church and was vigorously opposed by the modernizing Tudors, an argument that has been assailed by most historians of the period more recent than Thornley. Rosenwein, , Negotiating Space, 206Google Scholar ; Kaufman, “Henry VII and Sanctuary” ; Rosser, , “Sanctuary and Social Negotiation,” esp. 58–60Google Scholar , 74–76 ; Kesselring, , “Abjuration,” esp. 354–57Google Scholar . Even Elton would have disagreed with Thornley on this point: as he rather dismissively put it, Henry VIII in the mid-1530s could not “stomach” Cromwell's attempt to destroy sanctuaries, “anxious as always to preserve ecclesiastical claims once they were declared to be derived from him.” Reform and Renewal, 137.

117. Helmholz, , Ius Commune, 23–30Google Scholar ; Shoemaker, , “Sanctuary Law,” 6–7, 43–44, 234–36Google Scholar.

118. Although an anonymous fifteenth-century defender of Westminster sanctuary made the link between debtors and protection against violence by arguing that debtors were in physical danger, as indeed did Thomas More . Helmholz, , Ius Commune, 70–72Google Scholar ; More, , “The Historie of kyng Rycharde the thirde,” 47Google Scholar.

119. Rosser, , “Sanctuary and Social Negotiation,” 71Google Scholar ; Kaufman, , The “Polytyque Churche,” 148–49Google Scholar ; Helmholz, , Ius Commune, 70–72Google Scholar.

120. Rosser, , Medieval Westminster, 221.Google Scholar

121. More, , “The Historie of kyng Rycharde the thirde,” 47.Google Scholar

122. L&P Hen. VIII, 17:396, no. 714/5, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx ?compid=76667 (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

123. Loengard, Janet Senderowitz, ed., London Viewers and their Certificates, 1508–1558: Certificates of the Sworn Viewers of the City of London (London Record Society, 1989)Google Scholar , no. 397, <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=36062> (accessed Dec. 2, 2008).

124. See Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1868), 610–16.Google Scholar

125. Stow, John, A suruay of London Conteyning the originall, antiquity, increase, moderne estate, and description of that city, written in the yeare 1598. by Iohn Stow citizen of London. Since by the same author increased, with diuers rare notes of antiquity, and published in the yeare, 1603 (London: John Windet, 1603; STC 23343), 311Google Scholar. This passage does not appear in the 1598 version of his Survey (A Suruay of London [London: John Windet, 1598; STC 23341], 246)Google Scholar, but was part of the “increase” of the 1603 edition.