Bible Verse Could Save You From the Hangman's Noose

Hard to believe that memorizing the first verse of Psalm 51 in the Bible, a murderer could escape the hangman's noose.

In medieval England that was the law. In those days English secular courts meted out severe punishments; the death sentence applied to anything from treason to horse stealing. But in the church courts the death sentence did not exist, Having a connection-however tenuous-with the church meant a trial in an ecclesiastical court, which could save your life.

Proving the connection was easy. If a person could read, he was obviously a Christian cleric entitled to claim "benefit of clergy," a church law that exempted the lawbreaker from the most severs punishment.

Those who could not read-the majority of the population at the time-avoided the test of their literacy by memorizing what popularly became known as the "neck verse."

By reciting the first verse of Psalm 51, the lawbreaker claimed benefit of clergy. While this exemption led to much corruption, it also saved the neck of many a petty criminal.

By the time that  Henry VIII came to the throne in 1590, so many people were claiming a connection with the growing number of cathedrals, colleges, and monastic houses that hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers were eligible for benefit-of-clergy privilege. Apart from the nuns, however, until 1692 woman could not claim the privilege, and then only if married.

When the literacy test was revoked in 1705, anyone convicted of a first felony could claim benefit of clergy without having to prove it. However, many subsequent laws were passed expressly stated that punishment was to be "without benefit of clergy.  The law was finally abolished in England in 1841.

The United States, where early English colonial settlers had introduced the law, it was abolished in 1790 for all federal crimes. By the middle of the 19th century it had disappeared from U.S. courts altogether.

Psalm 51:"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions" 

From the Reader's Digest Facts & Fallacies