Benefit of Clergy.
53
ers and robbers should be denied the ben efit of clergy, two provisos were added to make the bill pass through the House of Lords : the one for excepting all such as were within the holy orders of bishop, priest, or deacon, and the other that the act "At holding up of a hand should only be in force until the next Par Though our chaplain cannot preach, liament. Pursuant to this act, many mur Yet he 'll suddenly you teach derers and felons were denied their clergy, To read of the hardest psalm." and the law passed on them to the great There are several allusions to the " neck- satisfaction of the nation; but this gave verse " by dramatists and others : thus, in great offence to the clergy, and the Abbot "The Jew of Malta," we have, — of Winchelcont said, in a sermon at Paul's "Within forty feet of the gallows conning his Cross, that the act was contrary to the law of God, and to the liberties of Holy Church, neck-verse." and that all who had assented to it had, by And in Massinger's "Guardian" (iv. i), — so doing, incurred the censures of the Church." "Have not your instruments Notwithstanding the attempts made to ef To tune when you should strike up, but fect some radical changes in the laws of cler Twang perfectly As you would read your neck-verse." ical immunities, it is curious that the practice of calling upon a convicted person to read, in And in the " History of King Lear," — order to prove his title to the " benefit," con "Madame, I hope your grace will stand tinued until a comparatively late period. A Betweene me and my neck-verse; if I be case occurred in 1666, where the bishop's Call'd in question for opening the king's letter." commissary had deceived the court by re In " Hudibras " (part iii. chap, i.) there is porting, contrary to the fact, that a prisoner an allusion to the practice of singing a Psalm could read; upon which Chief-Justice Kelat the gallows; the criminal condemned to ynge rebuked him severely, telling him " that be hung who was unable to read a verse in he had unpreached more that day than he the Psalms was to sing, or at least hear a could preach up again in many days," and verse sung, under the gallows, before he was fined him five marks. It was enacted in turned off. The popular saying among the the 5th of Anne (c. 6) that the benefit of people was that " if they could not read clergy should be granted to all those who their neck-verse at the sessions, they must are entitled to it without requiring them to read; and thus the " idle ceremony of read sing it at the gallows." ing," as Mr. Justice Foster justly terms it, "And if they cannot read one verse was finally abolished. I' th' Psalms, must sing it, and that's worse." It is singular that previous to the Stat On account of the many abuses which ute 3 and 4 William III., which expressly attended the practice of benefit of clergy, includes women, this privilege of clergy the subject was taken up in the reign of never extended to women, although it is Henry VII. Burnet, in his " History of the clear that by the canon law nuns were Reformation," says: " A law of Henry VII. exempted from temporal jurisdiction. for burning in the hand clerks convicted of The abolition of benefit of clergy to per felony, did not prove a sufficient restraint. sons convicted of felony was decreed by a statute passed in the reign of George IV. — And when in the fourth year of the follow ing reign, it was enacted that all murder Edinburgh Journal. Sir Thomas Smith as the mode of test, that the Scriptures might be opened at any place; and a passage from one of the old English writers seems to imply that a par ticularly difficult Psalm might be proposed :
