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--(an exception was made in the case of a professed nun)--nor might a _bigamus_, who was not a man who had committed bigamy, but one who
gpt
However, a statute (1 Edw. VI., c. 12, s. 16, _temp._ 1547) made an end of this latter distinction by declaring, with quaint tautology that _bigami_ were to have their clergy,
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Before this it might well be that your chance of saving your neck depended on whether you had married a widow or not; which species was dangerous in a sense undreamt of by Mr Weller. As regards the reading, it must not be supposed that a difficult examination was passed by the prisoner before he escaped. You had but to read what came to be significantly called the Neck-verse from the book which the officer of court handed you when you
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The Neck-verse was the first verse of the fifty-first Psalm in the Vulgate. It was only three words--_Miserere mei, Deus_:
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Have mercy on me, O God. It seems strange that it was ever recorded of anyone that he did not read, and was therefore condemned to be hanged; for surely it were easy to get these words by heart and to repeat them at the proper time? This must have been done in many cases, and yet sometimes criminals were so densely ignorant and stupid, or it might be merely bewildered, that they failed; then the wretch paid the penalty of his life.
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wrote the scribe against his name, and off he was hauled. The endless repetition of this word proved too much for official patience, and with brutal brevity the inscription finally appears,
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Sus. or
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S.
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M if he were a murderer, with a
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T if he were guilty of any other felony; if he
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a second time this was refused him, unless he were actually in orders. Of course the mark on the thumb was to record his previous escape from justice. It was with this
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Tyburn T (as it was called in Elizabethan slang) that Ben Jonson was branded. It is only within the last few years that careful Mr Cordy Jeaffreson has exhumed the true story from the Middlesex County Records. The poet quarrelled and fought a duel with Gabriel Spencer, an actor, and probably a former colleague. The affair came off at Shoreditch. Jonson, with his rapier, which the indictment (for a reason explained in the chapter on
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Deodands ) values at three shillings, briskly attacked his opponent, and almost immediately gave him a thrust in the side, whereof Spencer died then and there. Ben was forthwith seized and thrown into prison. Whilst waiting his trial he said that spies were set on him, but he was too much for them, and afterwards all the judges got from him was but
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Ay and
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No.