<i>Elizabeth Wydevile in the Sanctuary at Westminster</i>, 1470

Scofield, Cora L.

doi:10.1093/ehr/xxiv.xciii.90

Eng Hist Rev

1909

DOI: 10.1093/ehr/xxiv.xciii.90

|View full text |Cite

Elizabeth Wydevile in the Sanctuary at Westminster, 1470

Cora L. Scofield¹

Help me understand this report

Search citation statements

Order By: Relevance

Paper Sections

Select...

Citation Types

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Year Published

2009

Publication Types

Select...

Article1

Relationship

Self Cite0

Independent1

Authors

Journals

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…100 A royal proclamation issued in the name of Henry VI in 1470, in the midst of the most serious struggles of the Wars of the Roses, integrated the reverence due to the "holy places of seintwaries of Westminster and Saint Martin's"and by extension "any minister, servant, inhabitant, or sojornaunt within the said holy places"-with the importance of observing the "sovereign lord's laws and his peace." 101 As Krista Kesselring has demonstrated, the Tudor kings used their grants of clemency "to enhance their power and legitimize that power as authority." 102 Had not the Reformation and the dissolution of religious houses removed the possibility of the crown's employment of sanctuaries to manifest royal mercy, sanctuaries may well have continued to function in England for some time beyond the 1530s.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London

McSheffrey¹

2009

Law hist. rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In early sixteenth-century England, the presence of ecclesiastical sanctuaries in the legal, social, and religious landscape was a matter of great controversy. Any English church could offer temporary sanctuary to an accused felon, a privilege that expired after about forty days, following which the felon had to abjure the realm. More contentiously, by the late Middle Ages a number of English religious houses used their status as royally-chartered liberties to offer sanctuary permanently, not only to accused criminals, but also to debtors, alien craftsmen, and, especially during the civil wars of the fifteenth century, political refugees. These ecclesiastical liberties, small territories that exercised varying extents of juridical and political autonomy, considerably complicated the jurisdictional map of late medieval England. London in particular, with its host of liberties and peculiars, constituted a patchwork quilt of legal jurisdictions. Although the mayor and aldermen of London were wont to say that the “chyeff and most commodyous place of the Cytie of London” constituted “one hoole Countie and one hoole Jurisdiccion and libertie” over which its citizens ruled, saving only the authority of the king himself, this confident as-sertion of the City's jurisdiction over the metropolitan square mile was constantly belied by the presence of these liberties. The most notable—and for the City, the most troubling—was the sanctuary at St. Martin Le Grand, a sizeable area within the bounds of the City, before 1503 governed by the dean and canons of the College of St. Martin, after 1503 absorbed into the lands attached to Westminster Abbey and ruled by the abbot. For about two centuries before St. Martin Le Grand was dissolved in 1542, its precinct was home to a thriving population of debtors, accused felons, and perhaps most numerously alien craftsmen, all seeking for various reasons to avoid civic or royal jurisdiction.5 The dissolution of religious houses which accompanied the English Reformation greatly lessened, although did not altogether eradicate, the privileges of St. Martin's.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London

McSheffrey¹

2009

Law hist. rev.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.

Contact Info

customersupport@researchsolutions.com

10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614

Henderson, NV 89052, USA

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Blog Terms and Conditions API Terms Privacy Policy Contact Cookie Preferences Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

Made with 💙 for researchers

Part of the Research Solutions Family.

Elizabeth Wydevile in the Sanctuary at Westminster, 1470

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London

Sanctuary and the Legal Topography of Pre-Reformation London

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About