It will have been observed that one of Lady Hungerford’s servants pleaded his clergy, that is, he claimed the indulgence accorded by law to those who could read. In 1522 it was still the law that the privilege could be claimed by one who had committed murder. In 1531 an Act was passed by the provisions of which no person committing petty treason, murder, or felony was admitted to his clergy under the status of sub-deacon (23 Henry VIII., c. 1). William Inges’ claim would have been perforce admitted but for the singular objection on the score of bigamy. The exception seems strange, but was founded on well-understood provisions of the law. A bigamist, it must be remembered, was not what we of to-day mean when we use the word. A bigamist was one who had married two wives, the second after the decease of the first, or who had married a widow. We will return presently to this question of bigamy, after noting what Sir Thomas Smith, writing fifty years later, says as to clergy. Let us, however, premise that benefit of clergy means, as indeed the name imports, a privilege of the clergy consisting originally in the right of the clergy to be free from the jurisdiction of lay courts, and to be subject to the ecclesiastical courts only. Sir James Fitzjames Stephen aptly compares it to “the privilege claimed by British and other foreign subjects in Turkey, in Egypt, and in China, of being tried before their own courts.” The privilege was extended by 25 Edward III. (1351-2), st. 6, c. 4, to all manner of clerks, as well secular as religious. The statute was construed as being applicable to all persons who could read, and its effect is succinctly stated in “Piers Plowman,” written a few years later:— “_Dominus pars hereditatis mee._ is a meri verset, That has take fro tybourne. twenti stronge theves.” This is the description given by Sir Thomas Smith of the process of claiming clergy:—