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This chapter considers the factors that justified kings' and administrators' resort to the exile of large numbers of the criminal population. The relationship between the medieval English law of exile and the laws addressing felons and felonies is a complicated and, by modern reckoning, an unusual one. This is especially the case because two groups of people suspected of, or implicated in, felonies in the High Middle Ages regularly avoided the punishments which would have been meted out to them if they had been convicted in a court of law. One group was composed of men and women who, though not convicted of the crimes of which they were suspected, were in such bad repute that they were obliged to abjure (foreswear) the realm. The other comprised felons who confessed their crimes in sanctuary (on which, more shortly) or in other special circumstances, who also were obliged to abjure.

This introductory chapter discusses the different types of people living in England who to travelled to France in the period 1180 to the mid-fourteenth century. Many English visitors to France were, by and large, welcome guests. However, there were four principal categories of less desirable English sojourners in France. These include political exiles, demobilized troops, pariah groups, and the focus of the present study: those sent into exile because of their alleged association with serious criminal activities in England. Exile impoverished not only those who departed the realm, but also their spouses, children, and other kin. It forever divided families from their criminal kinfolk, at least in the English case. The system demanded and justified horrendous punishments for those who submitted to it if they later illegally tried to thwart it.

This chapter focuses on the abjurers themselves. The exile system was easier to accept in regions where multiple capital jurisdictions abutted one another, as they did on the continent, and where no one jurisdiction was receiving the whole mass of another jurisdiction's exiles. Some adjurers were caught up in circumstances and were perhaps harmless enough, but many were hardened criminals and opportunists, and all were so down on their luck upon their exile that they were susceptible to engaging in antisocial behavior of the most heinous sort. The discussions cover the abjurers' status and wealth, crimes suspected of the abjurers, and the fate of the abjurers' property.

This chapter details the journey of abjurers to their ports of embarkation. Abjurations of the realm occurred throughout the kingdom, and residents of some populous localities, such as London or Bristol, could expect to see them and to hear of them far more often than elsewhere. But in most towns, even county seats, and in any and every village, to witness an abjuration was unusual; it was an event. The abjurer received a public shaming, and at the rarest times this rite even included the torching of an abjurer's home. The evidence is ambivalent on whether abjurers chose their place of departure, had it imposed on them by crown authorities, or were, either by choice or assignment, encouraged to accept the port.

This chapter focuses on the village of Wissant in France, which was, until the mid-fourteenth century, a critical link in maintaining regular contact between England and the continent. It was an emporium, with ties to cloth towns such as Ypres. It was also a staging point for troops needing naval transport. The village, because of its importance, was home to an English agent and his staff who represented and tried to protect their countrymen's interests there. English abjurers who arrived in Wissant were in an already-weakened state of health from the character of their travel to Dover, bareheaded, barefooted, and unsheltered along the way. For those who were delayed by weather or local political conditions in boarding ship and thus had to bear the additional burden, of incarceration in Dover and the ritual of entering the sea before embarking, the situation was even worse.

This chapter focuses on those English exiles who, in one way or another, returned to their homeland during the long thirteenth century. Men and women convicted of felonies in the regular courts in England and condemned to die could apply for and sometimes obtain royal pardons, because of circumstances or at a price or both, following conviction. Even those who flouted justice by fleeing and were outlawed had access to pardons for their outlawry on condition that they deliver themselves and stand trial on the original charge or charges. As with a pardoned outlaw, that a pardoned abjurer from sanctuary could be compelled to stand trial for his acknowledged crime, particularly if a kinsman of the victim, one with proper standing made a direct accusation or appealed him. The pardon did not nullify the abjurer's victim's right of appeal.

This chapter discusses how the recourse to exile entered a crisis during the mid-fourteenth century. It suggests that forces conspired to bring the system of extra-regnal abjuration between England and France almost to an end by the close of the Hundred Years' War. In the first place, such deportations were tantamount to acts of belligerency during the war. The exiles and potential exiles, felons all, were also volunteering for and being recruited to England's armies for the sake of pardons and then demobilized in France during the truces. Fear of Englishmen among the French population rose to an intensity not matched or exceeded until the aggressive and lethal rivalries of the Napoleonic era.

This chapter examines the religious conversions in sixteenth-century England. Some historians have rightly warned us that there was more to the Reformation than a succession of individual religious conversions, noting that most people didn't undergo one. But without such conversions there could have been no Reformation, and attempting to untangle them draws us to the mysterious seed beds in which change first took root. For historians have to make sense of a paradox: that a convert's radical rejection of the old and familiar could not come out of nowhere; that it must somehow be grounded in earlier attitudes and experiences. The chapter first considers the English authorities' response to the Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther and to ‘Lutheran’ heresy before discussing William Tyndale's Worms New Testament and the public abjuration of heresy. It also analyses the deep and bitter divisions between heretics and Catholics over religion.

This chapter looks in detail at the evidence for Heywood’s involvement in the so called Prebendaries Plot against Thomas Cranmer in the diocese of Kent. It explores the religious divisions that provoked the complaints against Cranmer, and the interrogatories put to those interviewed over their involvement. It offers the first detailed analysis of the charges against Heywood, concluding that the playwright was not involved in any conspiracy against Cranmer, and indeed that describing the events in Kent as a ‘Plot’ is itself potentially misleading. Rather, when finally confronted with the demand that he affirm the Royal Supremacy, Heywood initially refused, and so became a traitor under the terms of the Treason Act of 1534. The chapter describes Heywood’s dramatic appearance on the scaffold with his co-accused, largely fellow members of the More circle, and his subsequent abject public abjuration.