A HISTORY OF LONDON feet to the church of Holy Trinity carrying the Host and relics with them,"' and in 1324 litanies and processions were ordered for peace and the welfare of the king and kingdom.*'^* In 1333, as a thanksgiving for the surrender of Berwick, there was a solemn procession of the clergy and people of the City from St. Paul's to the same church ; the clergy, wearing beautiful vestments and precious copes and carrying relics, sang Te Deum and other joyful canticles both going and returning, ' and all the people praised God dancing and leaping' [in choreis et tripudiis)?^^ Though every important event was thus made the occasion for an outward display of faith, yet the religious life of London in the latter part of the 13th and the first half of the 14th centuries appears to have suffered as much disturbance as did its political life. There are records of an unusual number of cases of violation of the sanctity both of ecclesiastical persons and of holy places. In 1282 St. Paul's was desecrated by the murder of certain prisoners who had taken refuge there, and who were dragged thence and beheaded outside the churchyard, the City in consequence being put under interdict by the bishop ; - two years later occurred the celebrated case of the hanging of Laurence Duket in the church of St. Mary le Bow."^ In 1 3 1 2 Robert de Brome was murdered in the church of St. Mary at Hill, and in 1321a woman slew the clerk of the church of All Hallows London Wall, and remained there in sanctuary for five days until the bishop sent to say that the church would not save her, and she was carried out and hanged. ^^' The famous robbery of the king's treasury at Westminster in 1303,^ when some of the monks of Westminster refused to be tried by secular judges,^*" involved the question of royal jurisdiction over clerks. In 1305 the Carmelite Friars were robbed of 300 marks of silver, and in attempting to defend their property one of them was killed and several wounded.^" In 1326 the citizens beheaded the Bishop of Exeter in Cheapsidc and sent his head to the queen ; his body lay naked in the street all day, and at last found a grave in the church of the Holy Innocents in the Strand, then derelicta et omnino destructa, whence it was afterwards conveyed to Exeter. The violence of the mob was such that the church courts were for a time in complete abeyance.^*' In 1336 St. Paul's was again violated by Hugh de Waltham, parson of St. Margaret Bridge Street, Nicholas, parson of St. Benet Gracechurch, and others, who entered the church with an armed force, took some men from it and assaulted others,'" while in 1338 it was interdicted twice and its cemetery once ' for homicide and other acts of violence there committed.' ^** Besides the occasions already referred to, the bishop and archbishop intervened in four other cases of breach of sanctuary in London between 1303 and 1337.*" The question of sanctuary was at this
- " Chron. Edto. I and Edw. 11 (Rolls Ser.), i, 278. "« D. and C. St. Paul's, A. box 80, no. 303.
'" Ckron. Edw. 1 and Edw. 11 (Rolls Ser.), i, 359 ; cf. Riley, Mm. 105. ^ Ann. Mon. Dunstable (Rolls Ser.), iii, 289 ; Reg. Epist. J. Peckham (Rolls Ser.), ii, 433-4, 523, 525, 595 ; Cat. Pat. 1281-92, p. 143. •" Reg. Epist. J. Peckham, iii, 833 ; French Chron. of Land. (Camd. Soc), 18. •'^ Ibid. 41, 42 ; Chron. Edw. 1 and Edw. 11 (Rolls Ser.), i, 219, 272 ; Lond. Epis. Reg. Baldock and Gravesend, fol. 3 I . "' See und;r Westminster in ' Religious Houses.' •"' Chron. Edw. 1 and Edw. 11 (Rolls Ser.), i, 132. '" Ibid. 144. "-' French Chron. of Lond. (Cimd. Soc), 52 ; Chron. Edw. I and Edw. II (Rolls Ser.), i, 316, 321. '" Cal. Pat. 1334-8, p. 165. '" Chron. Edw. I and Edw. 11 (Rolls Ser.), i, 368. '" Ibid. 130, 363 ; Cal. Close, 1318-23, p. 309 ; 1337-9, P- '^I. 198
