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of these privileged spots, the criminal was
secure from the vindictive arm of justice.
Artifice might seduce the wretch, or persua-
sion prevail with him to quit the fabric, and
the
range of thirty paces which were allowed
to him around it; but he was shielded, if he
determined to remain within it, from violent
abduction, both by the guardianship of the
laws, and the religio loci, or superstitious
dread of violating its sacredness.

"My lord of Buckingham, if my weak orator
Can from his mother win the Duke of York,
Anon expect him here; but if she be
Obdurate to entreaties, God forbid
We should infringe the holy privilege
Of sanctuary! Not for all this land
Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.”

The conventual church of White-Friars, under the name of Fratres beatæ Mariæ de Monte Carmeli, was first founded by Sir Richard Grey, knight, in the year 1241; and obtained, probably, at the same time, the immunities of sanctuary. These it enjoyed in the amplest manner till the twenty-second of Henry VIII., who, influenced by very * Stowe's Survey, book iii. p. 267.

sound motives of policy, considerably curtailed them, and regulated those which he suffered to remain ;* but James the First having, in the year 1608, injudiciously granted a charter of fresh liberties to a place already too licentious, it became the resort of insolvent debtors, cheats, gamesters, and desperadoes of every description, who gave to the district the name of Alsatia ;t and lived within it in an utter disregard of all law, order, and decency; insulting justice, and defying lawful authority. The legislature at length was roused to take cognizance of these desperate invaders of the peace of society. In the twenty-first of James I. an Act was passed to extinguish for ever the privilege of sanctuary throughout the kingdom; and a final stop was put to the inordinances of White-Friars in particular, by the 8th and 9th of William III. c. 27, by

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* Stat. at large, vol. ii. p. 148. | Stowe ut sup.

+ Noorthouck's History of London, p. 643. He says, "the humours of this place were displayed by Beaumont and Fletcher, in a comedy entitled The Squire of Alsatia." This curious play, we have seen, was written by Shadwell.

divesting it of its only remaining exemption -that of protecting debtors against the claims of their creditors.

: Burn has given us the following abridged account of the law of sanctuary, its privileges, and their abolition.

"Anciently the church and church-yard was a sanctuary, and the foundation of abjuration; for whoever was not capable of this sanctuary, could not have the benefit of abjuration; and, therefore, he that committed sacrilege, because he could not have the privilege of sanctuary, could not abjure. This abjuration was, when a person had committed felony, and for safeguard of his life had fled to the sanctuary of a church or church-yard, and there, before the coroner of that place, within forty days, had confessed the felony, and took an oath for his perpetual banishment out of the realm into a foreign country, choosing rather to lose his country than his life. But the foreign country into which

he was to be exiled might not be amongst infidels.-3 Inst. 115.

"By the Act of 21 Jac. c. 28, s. 7, it is enacted, that no sanctuary, or privilege of sanctuary, shall be admitted or allowed in any case. By which Act, such abjuration as was at the common law founded (as hath been said) upon the privileges of sanctuary is wholly taken away. But the abjuration by force of the statutes of 35 Eliz. c. 1, and 35 Eliz. c. 2, in the case of recusants, remaineth still, because such abjuration hath no dependency upon any sanctuary.-3 Inst. 115, 116.

"And the law was so favourable for the preservation of sanctuary, that if the felon had been in prison for the felony, and before attainder or conviction, had escaped, and taken sanctuary in the church or church-yard, and the gaolers or others had pursued him, and brought him back again to prison, upon his arraignment he might have pleaded the same, and should have been restored again to the sanctuary.-3 Inst. 217. Eccl. Law, vol. i. page 365

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.

WE are again summoned to the consideration of a work of varied character; not of uniform excellence, for several minute defects in the composition, and some deformities in the moral action of the novel, must preclude unqualified praise; while, on the other hand, that peculiar richness of invention, and vigour and vivacity in embodying his conceptions, that originality of thought, and power of language, which distinguish most of the other compositions of this extraordinary writer, are too conspicuous in Peveril of the Peak to suffer it to be dismissed with the cold approbation of its being merely an agreeable or successful effort of genius. We know, indeed, of no novel written by our author, which, generally speaking, offers to the reader a more extensive variety, or a happier opposition, of characters and situations; a greater abundance of singular but artfully

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