SANCTUARY is the Christian representative of the classical Asylum (q.v.), and was no doubt suggested in the first instance by the cities of refuge of the Levitical law. Originally every church or churchyard was a sanctuary for criminals. In England about thirty churches, from a real or pretended antiquity of the privilege, acquired special reputation as sanctuaries, e.g., Westminster Abbey and Beverley Minster. “The precincts of the Abbey,” says Dean Stanley, “were a vast cave of Adullam for all the distressed and discontented in the metropolis who desired, according to the phrase of the time, to take Westminster.” The sanctuary seats at Hexham and Beverley and the sanctuary knocker at Durham are still in existence. The protection afforded by a sanctuary at common law was this:—a person accused of felony might fly for the safeguard of his life to sanctuary, and there before the coroner, within forty days, confess the felony and take an oath of abjuration entailing perpetual banishment into a foreign Christian country. The sanctuary being the privilege of the church, it is not surprising to find that it did not extend to the crime of sacrilege, nor was it held to extend to high or petit treason. The law of abjuration and sanctuary was regulated by numerous and intricate statutes. A list of them will be found in Coke, Institutes, vol. iii. p. 115. Finally it was enacted by 21 Jac. I. c. 28, § 7, that no sanctuary or privilege of sanctuary should be admitted or allowed in any case. The privilege of sanctuary as protecting from civil process extended to certain places, parts or supposed parts of royal palaces, such as White Friars or Alsatia, the Savoy, and the Mint. The privilege of these places was abolished by 8 and 9 Will. III. c. 27, and 9 Geo. I. c. 28. ...

See TEMPLE.