A thorough search of the records of the court of King's Bench for the relevant period has made it possible for a few further points to be added concerning the Tudor abjurations in Sussex which are discussed in the previous pages.

 

First, although the detailed records of the eleven abjurations there printed are the only ones to survive, a twelfth did take place.

 

John Chaffyn, a Wivelsfield tailor, abjured the realm ' for certain felonies and murders,' a phrase which almost invariably means that a single murder had been confessed to. If Chaffyn did confess to murder the preponderance of murderers among the Tudor abjurors would be yet further increased.

 

The original record of his abjuration was delivered into King's Bench in Michaelmas term 1529 and should have been preserved in the subsidiary file of indictments for that term, which also included a Sussex inquest into a death by misadventure, but the file is unfortunately missing. All that can be confidently stated is that the abjuration must have taken place between the Lewes gaol deliveries of July 1528 and July 1529, at the second of which it would have been handed over by the officiating coroner, and that Chaffyn was not later discovered at large in the country.

 

Secondly, in the previous page it was implied that the outlawry of Thomas Goffe of Chichester subsequent to his abjuration of the realm from a Chichester church may have resulted from his having been discovered at large within the country without the king's pardon,5 but this was almost certainly not so. Goffe's abjuration and the inquest held on the body of the man whom he murdered were noted separately on the Controlment Roll," and Goffe's outlawry is entered only in respect of the murder. This merely indicates that the clerks of King's Bench did not subsequently realise that the man who had committed the murder and the abjuror were one and the same.

 

They only knew that the murderer had not been arrested and orders were therefore given first for his arrest and then for his exaction and outlawry. The outlawry was therefore arrived at solely by the blind momentum of the judicial process and cannot be associated in any way with the abjuration.

 

But Henry Danby, the London baker who had abjured from Chichester cathedral in May 1530 - the last Sussex abjuror to have sworn to leave the kingdom - was, as stated, later found at large within it and it is about him that the most colourful details have come to Light.

 

" In Trinity term 1532 he was brought into the court of King's Bench by the marshal of King's Bench, to whose custody he had recently been committed, and was asked why he should not be hanged on the strength of his confession and abjuration as he had been found in England without the king's reconciliation and licence.

 

He replied that after being despatched from Chichester as an abjuror, he withdrew from there to Portsmouth in accordance with his abjuration and from Portsmouth he sailed in a small boat of Flanders onto the high sea; but that later there arose such a great storm that the boat was driven back by the wind to the port of Plymouth, where the crew of the boat left him on shore and refused to have him in the boat any more, telling him that because he was an abjuror (homo abjuratus) they would all fare the worse (pejus expedirent) if they took him in their company in the boat and advising him to seek his fortune elsewhere (querere suas venturas).

He thereupon left Plymouth for London, trusting that there he might be re-abjured to a sanctuary in England according to the new statute; but at London Christopher Lye arrested him against his will and took him to Master Gressham, sheriff of London, who committed him to Newgate. Afterwards he escaped from the gatehouse at Newgate and went to Paris Garden, where he received the immunity of the order of St. John of Jerusalem.

 

Later, how-ever, the constable of Paris Garden and keeper of the barge of the prior (domini) of St. John of Jerusalem, a man whom he did not know, removed him to the prison of the Marshalsea of the King's Household and from there he was taken to the King's Bench prison at the instance of Master Baron Hales.

 

>The story is circumstantial, particularly that part of it which was alleged to have occurred in London. There was, for example, a shearman of London in the early 1530's named Christopher a Lye, Richard Gresham was one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex in office from Michaelmas 1531 until Michaelmas 1532, the other being Edward Altam," and John Hales was one of the barons of the Exchequer, third baron from 1522 to 1528 and second baron from 1528 to 1539.

 

There is no reason to doubt Danby's account of his arrest and committal to Newgate gaol, which he obviously knew at first hand, and his escape to Paris Garden. As a Londoner and felon he would have been well aware that the Southwark manor of Paris Garden, lying just south of the river opposite Fleet Street, was a privileged sanctuary wherein any felon, debtor or other offender could remain with impunity while keeping its rules.

 

This privilege, originally granted to the Templars when they held the manor, seems to have been taken over with the manor by the knights of St. John of Jerusalem (the Hospitallers) in 1324 and was regulated by ordinances made in 1420 by John duke of Bedford when he was their farmer there. It is interesting that the last Sussex abjuror of the realm found himself, at least for a short time, in a chartered sanctuary. This was, indeed, a situation very similar to that to which he had pleaded to be restored when brought to court; he obviously knew that between his abjuration and his appearance in King's Bench abjuration of the realm had been abolished in favour of abjuration to sanctuaries within England by the statute of 1531 (22 Henry VIII, c.l4).

 

Why Danby was later denied the benefit of sanctuary in Paris Garden is not explained, but it is probable that he was discovered to have been an unpardoned abjuror and was therefore regarded as disqualified. Such a discovery was sooner or later inevitable with his right hand branded with the fatal letter A. It is significant that he did not claim to have been forcibly removed by completely unknown persons but by an official of the liberty. He was, in fact, treated like any sanctuary man who committed a felony while in Paris Garden, ending up in King's Bench prison.

 

The earlier part of his story, although attractive and imaginative, is much less probable. As a Londoner he almost certainly made his way back to London shortly after leaving Chichester. However that may be, he had explained but not justified his presence in London. If his whole story was true, he should have sought another ship at Plymouth and, if finally unsuccessful, have taken sanctuary again there.' Rather surprisingly, William Fermour, the king's attorney, asked for the case to be adjourned until the next term, Michaelmas 1532, and this was granted.

 

In that term the attorney pleaded that by the law of the land he was not bound to answer Danby's plea and he demanded his execution on the abjuration. Against this Danby maintained that his plea was sufficient in law and that he would prove it was true, and that he should not be sent to execution since the king's attorney had not denied it or answered it in any way but had refused to admit its verification.

 

The court then inspected and considered the record of the abjuration and Danby's plea, and in the presence of the sergeants-at-law and the attorney-general it was decided that the plea was insufficient in law and invalid and that Danby should be hanged.

 

He thus suffered the fate of nearly every abjuror who was found at large in the country. The most that they could normally do was to play for time, thereby giving themselves a greater chance of escaping from gaol.

 

Thomas Spenley, a reaper of Hawkhurst in Kent, may be cited as an example of what could be achieved. He was indicted before the Sussex justices of the peace at Lewes on 7 October 1507 of breaking Robert Lotyngden's close at Salehurst on the previous 23 July and stealing a bay-coloured gelding worth 26s. 8d. from him.

 

He was presumably not arrested immediately, but when the gaol of Lewes castle was delivered on 15 February 1508 by justices sitting at Southwark he was one of the prisoners and was confronted with this indictment. He refused to answer it, pleading that on 18 November 1507 he had taken sanctuary for other felonies in the church of All Hallows the Great in London, but that on the same day unknown men forced him from this sanctuary to which he therefore asked to be restored.

 

This ploy was successful in that the case was adjourned and Spenley must have escaped from Lewes gaol, because after the record of these proceedings had been delivered into King's Bench in Trinity term 1508 an order went out for his arrest. He was never discovered and was therefore ultimately outlawed in the Sussex county court held at Lewes on 27 February 1516.

 

It would be surprising if this long-delayed sentence in any way affected the comfort or the manner of life of a felon so peripatetic as Spenley, always assuming that his life had lasted so long.

R.F.Hunnisett

 

 

 

Foreword              The Abjurations

 

 

 

 

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