It has been stated that all churches, parochial, collegiate, and
cathedral, were sanctuaries; but there were in different parts of
England about thirty supreme sanctuaries, of which Westminster, York,
Durham, Glastonbury, Ely, Ripon, and Beverley may be taken as types.
They owed this pre-eminence to the possession of relics and stories of
miracles wrought by the tutelar saint for the protection of suppliants
or the chastisement of those who violated the shrine. The origin of the
civil sanction is most obscure. Individual churches attributed their
franchise to the favour of ancient kings--Hexham to Ecfrith, King of
Northumbria; Ripon and Beverley to Athelstan, and York to Edward the
Confessor. Tradition affirms that in primitive times the term of
protection at Durham was thirty-seven days and at Beverley thirty days
on the first and second occasions, and if the fugitive resorted thither
a third time, he had to become _serviens ecclesiae imperpetuum_. These
intimations, if true, point to a process of evolution from small
beginnings represented by the three nights' protection to which the
sanctuary rights of an ordinary church were limited by the laws of
Alfred (887) to the extraordinary privileges which, if we accept Mr. R.
H. Forster's conclusions, existed at Durham.
These concerned both the area and the duration of the immunity. At other
places the right of sanctuary comprised the precinct as well as the
church itself.
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