In English law, the benefit of clergy (Law Latin Privilegium clericale) was originally a provision by which clergymen could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an ecclesiastical court under canon law. Eventually, the course of history transformed it into a mechanism by which first-time offenders could receive a more lenient sentence for some lesser crimes (the so-called "clergyable" ones).
Read more about Benefit Of Clergy: Origin, The Miserere, Tudor-era Reforms, Later Development
Famous quotes containing the words benefit of, benefit and/or clergy:
“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)
“Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won’t be for our benefit but for the authorities’. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“I see and hear daily that you of the Clergy preach one against another, teach one contrary to another, inveigh one against another without charity or discretion. Some be too stiff in their old mumpsimus, others be too busy and curious in their new sumpsimus. Thus all men almost be in variety and discord.”
—Henry VIII (1491–1547)