The Law's Lumber Room. the sea-coast and reach foreign shores as best he might — right of sanctuary traveling with him to the seashore. Every church yard was a full sanctuary also and in the progress of time a usage, if not a statute, created special sanctuaries — for instance, all the parish of Westminster became, one because of its cathedral, and also that of the parish of St. Martin's-le-grand in the heart of London city. But sanctuary did not apply to sacrilegious, blasphemous or treasonable malefactors. Was it not from sanctuary at Westminster that the poet Skelton safely lampooned Cardinal Wolsey, and has not Shakespeare told the sanctuary story of the widow of Edward IV, and did not Buckingham in the play of Richard III attack the sanctuary of the hapless Queen and her son the Duke of York? The pre cincts of Whitefriars (sanctuary now of several London newspapers) and the Savoy constituted special sanctuaries known in literature as Alsatian. Several reigns extended, or modified and limited this old lumbering right of sanctu ary. James I. amid all his bad doings is en titled to the credit of pretty much abolish ing sanctuary, but all special bits of it did not go until the time of the first George when (1724) sanctuary was relegated to a place in the law's lumber room. But not until Victoria's reign (1841) did the last vestige of benefit of clergy enter that room. Right of sanctuary did not however pre vent violences to Thomas a Becket in Can terbury Cathedral, nor to an Archbishop of York, son of Henry II (1191) in St. Mar tin's Priory at Dover. But these were exceptions. A picture of rare Ben Jonson might be hung on these walls of the law's lumber room anent the bit of benefit of clergy furniture, because by pleading that benefit he escaped hanging and the tragical enacting of the title of his great comedy "Every Man in his Humour." London court records show that
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the poet with his rapier killed one Gabriel Spencer in a duel at that historic portion of old London city where hapless Jane Shore died in a ditch (thereby giving name to it as the parish of Shoreditch to this era). In October, 1598, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Old Bailey but deman ded and received benefit of clergy (for at that time this salvation of wrong doers had been extended to all who could read like a clerk). Whenever afterwards rare old Ben took pen it was in a branded thumb. Pub lished sketches of his life omit mention of any of these facts. Thus the experienced keeper of the law's lumber room : but he might have added that the extension of benefit of clergy beyond church officers unto any mere reader of the English language finally ran into burlesque; for when the layman reader and malefaotor desired to plead benefit of clergy and was examined as to his etymological learning, he had only to read aloud in court the first verse of the 5 1st Psalm in the vulgate, begin ning, Miserere mei Dens. It was easy for an illiterate rogue to be taught those words and repeat them. That verse became slangily termed the " neck verse of the Bible; " be cause by repeating it when holding the proffered book, in order to show clerical literacy, the reader saved his neck from the hangman's rope. But a horrible piece of legal lumber is hidden in a far corner of our exhibited room, the structure of a torture unto death of the peine fort et dure, outlined by Black- . stone and detailed in Pike's " History of Crime," where may be traced its horrors. The phrase signified " punishment, severe and continuing until death," and was prescribed to indicted persons who, when arraigned, stood mute or declined to plead. Thus it existed, even until 1772, in the reign of the third George when a statute entered a plea of guilty for the recusant, and immediate sen tence. In 1827 the mild law now existing in every state, with the clause that allows a plea
