The benefit of clergy, more commonly known as the neck verse, was an English law that allowed the clergy to get out of being punished
Basically, if a person committed a crime, whether it was theft or murder, he could escape the gallows if he was able to recite the first few lines of Psalm 51 in Latin:
“O God, have mercy upon me, according to thine heartfelt mercifulness.”
Those are the words from Psalm 51 that the clergy would recite in Latin to prove that he was above the common court of law.
From the 12th century up until 1827 in England, the law stated that any man who recited these words would have to be tried in an ecclesiastical court under canon law.
Why was ecclesiastical court better than the secular court? Because it was far more lenient. The secular court made for the common person would often hang a person for minor offenses. Meanwhile, the ecclesiastical court would look the other way for its own kind, the clergy, and sentences were often less deadly than those of the secular courts.
With such a law, one would think that every criminal in the country would learn the Latin Psalm, but literacy was rare at this time and for the most part only men of the church spoke Latin and could read it. The test of the neck verse effectively prevented the common, uneducated man from escaping the noose.
When this law first came into effect, the accused had to appear in court tonsured and wearing the clothing of his office. He would then plead the benefit of the clergy and recite the Psalm.
By the 14th century, the neck verse was replaced by a literacy test. Men who claimed to be members of the clergy were made to read from the bible in Latin. More often than not, the choice verse from the bible was Psalm 51. By this time, more men were literate and the wealthy were able to claim the benefit of the clergy. Poor, desperate men would also learn the verse and hope, should they ever appear before court, that that would be the Latin verse chosen for them to read.
To prevent men from using the benefit of clergy more than once, it became the custom to brand the accused man’s thumb.
It wasn’t until 1624 that women were allowed to claim benefit of the clergy, but by 1706 the benefit of clergy’s literacy test was abolished. A little over a decade later, those who pleaded benefit of clergy were banished to North America.
This “get out of the noose” card was formally abolished in 1827 with the Criminal Law Act of 1827.
