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Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers by W. A. Clouston
page 304 of 355 (85%)
handed to him that he might read a verse. He could not read a word,
however, which a scholar who chanced to be present observing, he stood
behind him and prompted him with the verse he was to read; but coming
towards the end, the man's thumb happened to cover the remaining words,
and so the scholar, in a low voice, said: "Take away thy thumb," which
words the man, supposing them to form part of the verse he was reading,
repeated aloud, "Take away thy thumb"--whereupon the judge ordered him
to be taken away and hanged. And in Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_ (1630): "A
fellow having his book [that is, having read a verse in the Bible] at
the sessions, was burnt in the hand, and was commanded to say: 'May God
save the King.' 'The King!' said he, 'God save my grandam, that taught
me to read; I am sure I had been hanged else.'"

The verse in the Bible which a criminal was required to read, in order
to entitle him to the "benefit of clergy" (the beginning of the 51st
Psalm, "Miserere mei"), was called the "neck-verse," because his doing
so saved his neck from the gallows. It is sometimes jestingly alluded to
in old plays. For example, in Massinger's _Great Duke of Florence_, Act
iii, sc. 1:

_Cataminta_.--How the fool stares!

_Fiorinda_.--And looks as if he were conning his neck-verse;

and in the same dramatist's play of _The Picture_:

Twang it perfectly,
As if it were your neck-verse.

In the anonymous _Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell_ (1603), Act ii,
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