ond
son the little Duke of York was torn away from her to share the
captivity and dark fate of his brother Edward V. in the Tower. Among
other noted persons who sought shelter here were Owen Tudor (uncle of
Henry VII.) and Skelton, the first Poet Laureate. The latter from his
safe retreat in the sanctuary sent forth against Cardinal Wolsey
invectives so bitter and so forcible that his death would have been
certain had he ventured outside the Abbey precincts. The rights of
the sanctuary were in full force till the time of Elizabeth, who
restricted the inmates to debtors; but under James I. all the English
sanctuaries were suppressed.

Near the Sanctuary was the Almonry, with its chapels and charitable
endowments, but deriving its chief interest to us as being the scene
of the early labours of Caxton. Margaret Richmond, the mother of
Henry VII., the gifted woman who founded St. John's and Christ's
Colleges, and who saw the signs of the coming changes, specially
protected in the Almonry, which she had re-endowed, the great pioneer
printer and his presses. Here the infant art grew up and flourished,
and still in the word "chapel," which is used to signify a meeting of
the compositors of a printing establishment, preserves a memento of
its early connection with the chapel of St. Anne in Margaret
Richmond's Almonry.

We will pass on, now to the Cloisters, begun by Edward the Confessor,
but rebuilt in the fourteenth century. Looking back four or five
hundred years we see the monks pacing to and fro, gossiping or
transacting the petty details of their daily life, and, as the time
came, digging graves for one another in the central grassplat. Here
the monks shaved each other's heads--an art in which they were
expected to be very skilful, and here the novices carried on their
studies. Rough mats took off the chill of the stone benches in some
degree, and the floor was littered over with hay and straw in summer,
and with rushes in winter. But in cold or stormy weather it must have
been a desolate place at the best, for the lower parts of the windows
opening on the central court were never closed.

Along the South Cloister lay the magnificent refectory, an upper hall
of the time of Edward II., with arcades of the time of the Confessor
beneath it. Very strict were the rules of behaviour in this great
dining-room. No monk might speak, and guests might only whisper.
There were particular rules against leaning on the elbows, sittin