Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St.
Paul's steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest
thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills--that is to
say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert--the which four
doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he
looked out of an old dove-cot, and warned and charged that no man should
be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul's steeple-top unless he
rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant
of his neck"--and so on, in this fantastical style.

* * * * *

The meaning of the phrase "benefit of clergy" is not perhaps very
generally understood. The phrase had its origin in those days of
intellectual darkness, when the state of letters was so low that anyone
found guilty in a court of justice of a crime which was punishable with
death, if he could prove himself able to read a verse in a Latin Bible
he was pardoned, as being a man of learning, and therefore likely to be
useful to the state; but if he could not read he was sure to be hanged.
This privilege, it is said, was granted to all offences, excepting high
treason and sacrilege, till after the year 1350. At first it was
extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who,
however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the
increase of learning this "benefit to clergy" was restricted by several
Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the
reign of George IV.

In _Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments_, a book of _facetiæ_
very popular in the 16th century, a story is told of a criminal at the
Oxford Assizes who "prayed his clergy," and a Bible was accordingly