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��BENEFIT OF CLERGY.
��BENEFIT OF CLEBGT.
��Although the Eoman Catholic Church, like most other religious organizations, has generally sought to extend and strengthen its dominion hy means of temporal power, it nevertheless, through- out the greater part of its history, has claimed as one of its fundamental rights that all churchmen should be exempt from the criminal jurisdiction of secular courts. This claim was encouraged by several of the Roman emperors, and many of the states founded upon the ruins of the empire acknowledged it and submitted to it; but in England it was stoutly resisted for centuries.
About the year 1150, the struggle be- tween the English government and the Church reached its crisis. A priest, hav- ing ruined a young lady of noble birth, had murdered her father. The king de- manded that he should be delivered up for trial. The bishops and clergy said : " No ; this is our business ; we will try our brother, and, if we find him guilty, we will punish him with our disapproval, with spiritual censure, and with pains and penances." They concealed the priest and resisted the officers of the law sent to arrest him. Troops were sent against them and were repulsed, and at length the king confiscated their estates for rebellion. Then down came the thun- derbolt of Rome, excommunicating him and his followers from Holy Church, de- claring them outlaws from the human race, and consigning their souls to eter- nal hell. The king bowed his head and trembled. The great leader of the cler- gy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, re- turned from exile. All lovers of Holy Church, priest and monk, men, women and children, all ranks and all ages, poured forth to meet him, and to cele- brate with hymns of joy his triumphant entrance. Four days afterward, at the desire of the king, as it is supposed, he was assassinated at the foot of his altar.
��" From the time of his death it was be- lieved that miracles were worked at his tomb ; thither flocked hundreds of thou- sands in spite of the most violent threats of punishment ; at the end of two years he was canonized at Rome, and until the breaking out of the Reformation, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, for pilgrimages and prayers, was the most distinguished saint in England."
Thus, by the life, leadership and death of Saint Thomas a Becket, one of the ablest and boldest prelates of his- tory, the germ of what is known in law as Benefit of Clergy was firmly planted in England. Persons in holy orders, per- sons in "immediate intercourse with divinity, were not to be judged by pro- fane judgments, sentenced by profane mouths, or touched in any manner un- pleasant to them by profane hands," whatever crimes they might commit. This was the first step.
In course of time, claimants for this privilege became so numerous, and it be- came so difficult to draw the lines of de- markation between the regular clergy and persons having clerical duties and functions, that Parliament enacted [25 Edward III., § 3, C. 4.] that "all man- ner of clerks, as well secular as religious, which shall be from henceforth convict before the secular justices for any trea- sons or felonies touching other persons than the king himself or his royal majes- ty, shall from henceforth freely have and enjoy the privilege of Holy Church, and shall be, without any impeachment or delay, delivered to the ordinaries de- manding them." This was step number two.
But it often happened that clerks, both religious and secular (for secular clerks had a semi-religious character), were ad- mitted to office without any written evi- dence of ordination. Written evidence, too, might be forged or lost; but there
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