exposed upon London Bridge, and the limbs over the gates of Hereford, Oxford, Cambridge, and York. The Duchess herself was condemned by the ecclesiastical courts, presided over by the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Norwich, who sentenced her to do public penance through the streets of London on three several days, a Monday, a Wednesday, and a Friday. She was then imprisoned for life at Chester, whence she was afterwards removed for greater seclusion to Peel Castle in the Isle of Man. Upon the night of Bolingbroke’s arrest she had fled for sanctuary to Westminster Abbey, but was refused admission by the Abbot on the ground of spiritual offence. This is a very curious circumstance, and it seems altogether uncertain whether such right of sanctuary could canonically be disallowed. In fact it is fairly plain that, without some particular and direct injunction from the Holy See, sanctuary should not be withheld. However, it must be remembered that the Abbot of Westminster was a highly important personage with a seat in the House of Lords. The Abbey was in close proximity to the Royal Palace, and it seems probable that political motives influenced the unusual decision in this especial instance.
The feature that is rendered most prominent by so famous a case, as well as by the majority of the earlier trials for witchcraft—that is to say, until the middle of the sixteenth century—is that the penalties for sorcery alone do not seem to have been notoriously severe, and, save in the rarest exceptions, this offence was only punished by death when there were aggravating circumstances, and almost invariably the additional charge was that of high treason. This is very clearly shown owing to the fact that when the Duchess of
