One guilty of the crime of high treason was not entitled to clergy and the exemption was not granted to those convicted of ordinary misdemeanors.[10] A clergyman was exempted from capital punishment _toties quoties_, as often as he repeated the same offense; for a second, although it might be a wholly different offense, he was hanged. But of the laity, peers and peeresses were discharged for the first offense, without reading, while commoners, of the male sex, who could read, were branded in the hand and women commoners were held not entitled to clergy.[11] Nuns, however, were held entitled to their clergy, at an early day, the same as the monks and other churchmen, but the privilege, in contemplation of the law, enured for the benefit of the church and not for the nun.[12] As the privilege was enforced in more recent times, after conviction and any time before the execution of the sentence, when the clerk claimed his clergy, a priest or ordinary would present him with a “psalter,” and if he could read his “neck-verse,” he was burned in the hand and discharged. The first verse of the 51’ Psalm was the verse most generally read to test the learning of the prisoner and this verse was therefore called a “neck-verse,” because it decided the fate of the person claiming clergy, and the neck of the unfortunate called upon to read this verse depended upon his ability to read it.[13] The rule of law governing the ordained clerk was that he could not be tried in the lay courts at all, but only in an ecclesiastical court and his punishment was governed entirely by that court. In Bracton’s time, even before conviction in the secular court, the clerk was delivered when demanded by the bishop’s court.[14] But before the end of the reign of Henry III. the accused was not delivered until after his conviction.[15] In the time of Edward III., the recognition and enjoyment of the benefit of clergy, depended entirely upon the ordinary demanding the felon as a clerk from the secular authorities.[16] In the reign of Edward IV., if the ordinary refused a man his clergy, where he was able to read, the cause was certified to the King’s Bench, and the ordinary was fined, on the theory that he was only a minister of the secular court and not a judge in the cause.[17] And during the same reign, if the ordinary granted clergy to a felon who could not read, the ordinary was fined and the convict hanged and the secular courts assumed the right to judge of the ability of the prisoner to read, for they made the record, “_quod legit ut clericus, ideo tradator ordinario_” and if the ordinary granted clergy to one who could not read, or refused it to one qualified, he was fined.