A Privilege the Crown Gradually Withdrew

The right of sanctuary came under sustained pressure from centralizing English monarchs from the late medieval period onward, who saw the privilege as a standing limit on royal justice, and Henry VIII's legislation in the 1530s sharply restricted which crimes qualified for sanctuary protection and moved much of the practice toward a smaller number of officially designated sanctuary towns rather than any church a fugitive could reach. The general right was abolished for most purposes under James I in 1623, with the narrower privilege protecting debtors in certain specific locations persisting somewhat longer before final abolition in 1697, ending the institution as an active part of English law, though church sanctuary in various local and less formalized guises persisted considerably longer in parts of continental Europe.

Scholars of medieval law and religion frequently compare the Christian right of sanctuary to the biblical cities of refuge as structurally similar institutions, both giving a specific sacred or legally protected place the power to interrupt an ordinary process of arrest or vengeance and impose a cooling off period or formal legal procedure in its place, though the two systems developed independently and differ considerably in their detailed rules and in the offenses each covered.