V.--THE SANCTUARY, CLOISTERS, AND CHAPTER-HOUSE.
The Westminster Hospital and National Schools occupy the site of an important portion of the precincts of Westminster Abbey as it was in the olden times. This was the Sanctuary to which certain classes of wrong-doers could flee for safety and escape the arm of the law. The privilege of sanctuary had its uses in those troublous times; for it enabled the innocent to take refuge where the tyrant dared not molest them; but it also gave shelter to crowds of the lawless and depraved.
The Westminster Sanctuary was one out of about thirty attached to the great English monasteries; in form it was a strong Norman fortress, whose privileges were considered to be guaranteed by King Lucius, King Sebert, and the apostle Peter himself. The Danes cared nothing for sanctuaries, but Edward the Confessor re-organised the institution with the Pope's aid.
There was great excitement and even consternation in London and Westminster when in 1378 the privileges of the Abbey were tragically violated. John of Gaunt had imprisoned in the Tower two knights who had offended him. They escaped and rushed into sanctuary at Westminster, but were soon pursued thither by the Constable of the Tower and a company of armed men. The two knights were in the choir of the Abbey attending high mass, and the deacon was just reading the words "If the good man of the house had known what time the thief would appear"--when the service was interrupted by the clash of arms. One of the knights escaped, the other was chased twice round the choir till he fell dead, pierced with twelve wounds. His servant and one of the monks were killed at the same time. In consequence of this desecration, the Abbey was shut up for four months; the chief assailants were heavily fined and excommunicated.
In the fifteenth century, Edward the Fourth's Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was twice an inmate of the Sanctuary. On the first occasion Edward V. was born here; on the second in 1483 her second son the little Duke of York was torn away from her to share the captivity and dark fate of his brother Edward V. in the Tower. Among other noted persons who sought shelter here were Owen Tudor (uncle of Henry VII.) and Skelton, the first Poet Laureate. The latter from his safe retreat in the sanctuary sent forth against Cardinal Wolsey invectives so bitter and so forcible that his death would have been certain had he ventured outside the Abbey precincts. The rights of the sanctuary were in full force till the time of Elizabeth, who restricted the inmates to debtors; but under James I. all the English sanctuaries were suppressed.