Editing Benefit of clergy (section)

== The Miserere  {{anchor|Neck-verse}} ==
At first, to plead the benefit of clergy, one had to appear before the court [[tonsure]]d and otherwise wear an ecclesiastical dress. Over time, this proof of clergyhood was replaced by a [[literacy test]]: defendants demonstrated their clerical status by reading from the Latin [[Bible]]. This opened the door to literate lay defendants also claiming the benefit of clergy. In 1351, under [[Edward III of England|Edward III]], this loophole was formalised in statute, and the benefit of clergy was officially extended to all who could read.<ref name=mullaney>See ''Mullaney v. Wilbur'', 421 U.S. 684, 692-93, 44 L.Ed.2d 508, 515-16, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 1886; (1975).</ref> For example, the English dramatist [[Ben Jonson]] avoided hanging by pleading benefit of clergy in 1598 when charged with manslaughter. In the British colony of [[Massachusetts]], the two soldiers convicted of manslaughter in the 1770 [[Boston Massacre]] were spared execution under the benefit of clergy. Still, they underwent branding of their right thumbs to prevent them from invoking the right in any future murder case (see Tudor reforms below).<ref>[https://historyofmassachusetts.org/boston-massacre-site-gets-a-makeover/  Benefit of Clergy, Boston Massacre]</ref>

Unofficially, the loophole was even larger because the Biblical passage traditionally used for the literacy test was, appropriately, the third verse of [[Psalm 51]] (Psalm 50 according to the [[Vulgate]] and [[Septuagint]] numbering), ''Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam'' ("O God, have mercy upon me, according to thine heartfelt mercifulness"). Thus, an illiterate person who had memorized the appropriate Psalm could also claim the benefit of clergy. Psalm 51:3 became known as the "neck verse" because knowing it could "save one's neck" (an idiom for "save one's life") by transferring the case from a secular court, where [[hanging]] was a likely sentence, to an ecclesiastical court, where both the methods of trial and the sentences given were more lenient.<ref name=mullaney/>

The benefit of clergy was commonly applied as a means of judicial mercy: in [[Elizabethan era|Elizabethan]] England, courts might allow more than 90% of clergyable offenders the benefit of clergy, which was far higher than the literacy rate of the period.<ref>{{cite web |first=Keith E. |last=Wrightson |year=2009 |website=Open Yale Courses |title=Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts: Lecture 15 — Crime and the Law |url=http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-251/lecture-15 |quote=... it is perfectly clear that the magistrates and the judges were permitting any kind of stumbling through the neck verse—often from memory, probably—in order to allow them to have this means of escaping the death penalty.}} Ca. 38:37.</ref> If a defendant who claimed the benefit of clergy were thought to be particularly deserving of death, courts occasionally would ask him to read a different passage from the Bible; if, like most defendants, he was illiterate and simply had memorized Psalm 51, he would be unable to do so and would be put to death.

In the ecclesiastical courts, the most common form of trial was by [[compurgation]]. If the defendant swore an [[oath]] to his innocence and found twelve ''compurgators'' to swear likewise to their belief that the accused was innocent, he was acquitted. A person convicted by an ecclesiastical court could be [[defrocking|defrocked]] and returned to the secular authorities for punishment. Still, the English ecclesiastical courts became increasingly lenient, and by the 15th century, most convictions in these courts led to a sentence of [[penance]].