THE GALILEE BELL: From Sanctuary to Asylum and Back – The Role of the Church

EXTRACT The Galilee Bell etc The Royal Grants included, among other tax exemptions and privileges, the privilege of sanctuary. It is this privilege, as claimed mainly in Beverley Minster which appears in the tales which follow . The men and women who came to the Minster to claim sanctuary were desperate; it was often their last hope of survival. The churches, offered sanctuary only for a short time, about one month; but it was enough to save the man or woman in flight from instant, and frequently merciless, retribution – a lynching, If they got as far as the church to knock on its door, the north Door in the case of Beverley Minster (fig 2), and get admitted, they were generally safe - for the time being. Theoretically at least protection started over a mile away from the church where the boundaries were marked by four crosses on the main routes into town at the four points of the compass. (fig 3 is the one at Kilingrave)). In practical terms, the penalties imposed on a howling mob after blood, intent on stopping him from claiming sanctuary, were unlikely to deter them. Once the sanctuary-seeker got inside the church, often dragged to safety from the clutches of that mob of men, women, even children out for excitement, by the priests on duty, they would be safe- usually… The records scattered around the 13th to 15th centuries hold a few cases of women sanctuary seekers, some had committed murders, some were debtors. But one unusual case was a claim to sanctuary at Beverley in 1225. It was the 9th year of Henry III’s reign; it was also an important year in the Church calendar, Saint Thomas Aquinas was born that same year and there was a re-issue of the Magna Carta, which is the version that forms the basis of the common law today. But it was neither murder nor debt, nor the birth of St Thomas, nor even some important provision in Magna Carta, which brought Joan Edwalker to Beverley Minster that June day…. Many people in the town had heard of Joan by now, and many were the stories about why she only wanted to go away. There was much sympathy for her especially among the women. No one guessed that this was the only way she could think of to escape a disastrous marriage to a brutal drunkard of a husband…. drudgery was not uncommon in those days. A century and a half later, and after the black death, there may still have been no divorce laws, but the chances for work improved, especially in the cloth preparation trade, which paid well (though less than for a man). By then women were working with their husbands or on their own. Others were known to travel abroad, like Mary Hogg, or deal in wool, as Emma Earl did in Yorkshire at the end of the 14th century. The emancipation of women had begun!