A second source, certainly in the early years, was the rapidly increasing population of the cities and towns of England. It is of record that in the days of the London Company one town appropriated funds sufficient to pay the expenses to Virginia of a large number of its unemployed, and probably the same thing was done by other towns for their unemployed. Doubtless a little "pressure" was applied in the case of young men who had no occupation and no visible means of support. And shanghaiing, to use a modern term, was not unknown. A third source from which settlers came developed from the custom which grew up in England of sending to Virginia, and later to all the colonies, persons who had been convicted of law-breaking. At that time there were some hundred felonies in the English code of jurisprudence for which the sentence of death by hanging could be imposed. These felonies included such offenses as stealing a pig or anything of greater value than a shilling. The ruling classes of England had long realized that punishments were too severe for offenses which today would be misdemeanors; and in the fifteenth century an effort had been made to mitigate the severity of punishment by an amendment of the law of "benefit of clergy." This law was a law of Parliament which had come down from earlier ages of the Church. Under that law an ecclesiastical person, either priest or monk, who was charged with a felony could not be tried by a civil court but was delivered up to the bishop of his diocese for trial in an ecclesiastical court. By the end of the sixteenth century Parliament had amended the benefit of clergy law so that every free male who could read and write, upon conviction of a first offense of felony might plead "benefit of clergy", and upon showing that he could read a verse of Scripture, have the penalty remitted. He was then burned in the hand with a hot iron so that the scar thereby made would be evidence against him if he should plead benefit of clergy a second time. The benefit of clergy law was early written into the Virginia code and continued in that code until after the Revolution. Harsh as was the law it showed a real effort to ameliorate still harsher laws, and it saved the lives in England and America of many thousands of first offenders. The first verse of the fifty-first Psalm was so frequently presented to be read by some convicted man or boy that it became known as the "neck verse" because it saved a life; and many a kindly official taught a 'teen-age boy that verse so that he could "read" it when it was presented to him. One of the earliest records of the General Court of Virginia contains the following entry under date January 4, 1628/29: William Reade, aged thirteen or fourteen years, convicted of manslaughter, when the verdict was read, and William Reade asked what he had to say for himself, that he ought not to die, demanded his clergy, whereupon he was delivered to the Ordinary.