"Benefit of clergy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be plucked from the hands of rude secular justice and tried by a tribunal of their own. In 1402, a couple of thieves, both clerks of the University, were condemned to death by the Provost of Paris. As they were taken to Montfaucon, they kept crying "high and clearly" for their benefit of clergy, but were none the less pitilessly hanged and gibbeted. Indignant Alma Mater interfered before the king; and the Provost was deprived of all royal offices, and condemned to return the bodies and erect a great stone cross, on the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... imprisoned; when, should he further persist in his refusal during three months longer, he must abjure the realm; but in case of his rejecting this alternative, or returning from banishment, his offence was declared felony without benefit of clergy. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... convicted. He was sent to prison and such goods and chattels as he had "were forfeited." It is a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he returned to the faith of ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... truth rode about the country in her barouche with outriders, launched packets of tracts among the cottagers and tenants, and would order Gaffer Jones to be converted, as she would order Goody Hicks to take a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit of clergy. My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic and simple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of approving of everything which his Matilda did and thought. So that whatever changes her own belief might undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious variety of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... characteristic. Condillac after the marquis's death had refused to pay tithes to Mother Church and has flouted and insulted the Bishop. This prelate, after finding remonstrance vain, has retorted by placing Condillac under an Interdict, depriving all within it of the benefit of clergy. Thus, they have been unable to find a priest to venture thither, so that even had they willed to marry mademoiselle by force to Marius, they lacked the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... England, where this Border warfare formerly raged for centuries. The desperadoes engaged in it on the Scottish side were known as Moss-troopers, any of whom when caught by the English were taken to Carlisle and hanged near there at a place called Hairibee. Those who claimed the "benefit of clergy" were allowed to repeat in Latin the "Miserere mei," at the beginning of the 51st Psalm, before they were executed, this becoming known as ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the Mr. KIPLING who has been making such a splendid speech about the Cabinet and their mercenariness and the treacherous nature of the Irish is the same Mr. KIPLING who wrote "The Recessional" and "Without Benefit of Clergy"? Some one here says that he is, but I doubt it.—A. L. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... past the age for work and only had to watch what went on at the quarters, was usually the first to notice a budding friendship, which he reported to the master. The couple was then questioned and, if they consented, were married without the benefit of clergy. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... roughly with him than you would shake a bottle of Chambertin and expect the "sunset glow" to redden your glass unclouded. On the other hand, it may be said that poetry is not an article of prime necessity, and potatoes are. There is a disposition in many persons just now to deny the poet his benefit of clergy, and to hold him no better than other people. Perhaps he is not, perhaps he is not so good, half the time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you must pay for him, by not trying to make a drudge of him while he is all his lifetime struggling ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
