girdle of Sir John de Stapleford, Vicar-Gen eral of the Bishop of Winchester, and he was condemned to be hung at Tyburn. "Louder and louder became the cries of the miserable culprit as he receded from the judges; and just when the sergeants were dragging him across the threshold, he clung to the pillar which divided the portal, shrieking with a voice of agony, which pierced through the hall : ' I demand of Holy Church the benefit of my clergy! ' The thief was replaced at the bar. During the earlier portion of the proceedings the kind-hearted vicar-general had evidently been much grieved and troubled by his enforced participation in the condemnation of the criminal. Stepping forward, he now addressed the court, and entreated permis sion in the absence of the proper ordinary, to try the validity of the claim. Producing his breviary, he held the page close to the eyes of the kneeling prisoner; he inclined his ear. The bloodless lips of the ghastly caitiff were seen to quiver. ' Legit ut Clericus,' instantly exclaimed the vicar-gen eral; and this declaration at once delivered the felon from death, though not from cap tivity. ' Take him home to the pit,' said the vicar-general, ' where, shut out from the light of day and the air of heaven, he will be bound in iron, fed with the bread of tribulation, and drinking the water of sor row, until he shall have sought atonement for his misdeeds and expiated his shame.'" The manner of administering the test is thus described by Sir Thomas Smith in his "Commonwealth of England "(1565): "The bishop must send one with authority under his seal, to be a judge in that matter at every gaol delivery. If the condemned man demandeth to be admitted to his book, the judge commonly giveth him a Psalter, and turneth to what place he will. The prisoner readeth so well as he can (God knoweth sometime very slenderly); then he, the judge, asketh of the bishop's commissary, ' Legit ut Clericus? ' The commissary must say legit, or non legit, for these be

words formal, and our men of law be verv precise in their words formal. If he say legit, the judge proceedeth no further to sentence of death; if he say non, the judge forthwith proceedeth to judgment." It appears that the clergy regarded with some jealousy the extension of the privilege to any but of their own order, and a curi ous instance to this effect is given in the Year Book, 34th Henry VI., c. 49 (1455). A man indicted of felony claimed the " bene fit," upon which the Archdeacon of West minster Abbey was sent for, who showed him a book in which the felon read well and fluently. Upon hearing this, the court ordered him to be delivered to the archdea con on behalf of the ordinary; but the arch deacon refused to take him, alleging that the prisoner was not a clerk. This raised a serious difficulty, and the question was one of particular importance to the prisoner, as the judge deliberated whether he must not of necessity be hanged. Some delay occurred, and meanwhile a more lenient archdeacon being appointed consented to hear the prisoner read, and thus saved his life. A similar case which is recorded in the 2 1 st Edward IV. (1481) was not so for tunate in the result to the criminal, for the objection to his not being of the Church prevailed, and he was hanged. As may naturally be supposed, means were taken to defeat justice by cramming an illiterate criminal sufficiently 'to pass the ordeal. This was, however, an indictable offence. In the 7th Richard II. (1383), the vicar of Round Church in Canterbury was arraigned and tried " for that, by the license of the jailer there, he had instructed in reading one William Gore, an approver, who at the time of his apprehension was un learned." For the ordeal of the " benefit," the Fiftyfirst Psalm was generally selected, and the opening words, " Miserere mei Deus" came to be considered what was popularly termed the "neck-verse" par excellence. It appears, however, from what we have quoted from