Benefit of Clergy
Through the mechanism of benefit of clergy, many defendants found guilty of certain felonies were spared the death penalty and given a lesser punishment.
Dating back to the middle ages, benefit of clergy was originally a right accorded to the church, allowing it to punish its own members should they be convicted of a crime. In this instance the court did not prescribe any punishment for the defendant and instead handed him over to church officials.
Since it was difficult to prove who was affiliated with the church, convicts who claimed benefit of clergy were required to read a passage from the Bible.
Judges usually chose verses from the 51st Psalm, which was termed the "neck verse", since it saved many people from hanging.
As literacy became more common outside the church, the practice gradually developed of permitting all men convicted of allowable felonies to be permitted benefit of clergy if they could read the "neck verse". This test was a flexible one, and judges could be lenient or strict in their choice of text and level of literacy required, depending on whether they wished to impose the death penalty in a specific case, or not. In 1623 women found guilty of the theft of goods less than ten shillings in value were also allowed benefit of clergy, and in 1691 women were granted the privilege on the same terms as men.
In 1706 the reading test was abolished and benefit of clergy became automatic for any offence which had not been excluded from this privilege. Until 1779 the recipients of benefit of clergy were branded on the thumb in order to ensure that the benefit could not be claimed more than once. Between 1706 and 1718 some defendants allowed benefit of clergy were sentenced to up to two years hard labour in a house of correction. The 1718 Transportation Act allowed the courts to sentence those allowed benefit of clergy to be punished with more onerous sentence of transportation.
Concern that serious offenders were getting off too lightly, however, led to the passage of several statutes in which specific offences were removed from benefit of clergy. In the sixteenth century murder, rape, highway robbery, burglary, horse-stealing, pickpocketing, and theft from churches, were deemed non-clergyable.
