Sanctuary

The right claimed by the Church of affording protection to criminals who took refuge in churches and other consecrated precincts. In some cases these refugees from justice were enabled to set the law at defiance for years, by keeping within these precincts. Some of the most notorious of these cities of refuge were abolished by Act of Parliament in 1697, but it was not until the reign of George I that the last of them, the Sanctuary of St. Peter’s, Westminster, ceased to exist.