250 The Period of Constitution Making
ticra and other engagements into which he entered, in
1172. After the murder, it was impossible for him to en-
force Ms claims over criminous clerks; the matter was
passed over in silence. In the years that followed, how-
ever, the clergy got into some logical difficulty by having
it pressed home to them that if the clerical murderer
of a layman could escape punishment by death, there
ought to be reciprocity and the lay murderer of a clerk
enjoy the same immunity. The fact that Becket's
murderers were unpunished lent some point to this argu-
ment. The clergy began to feel uncomfortable, doubting
whether their lives were safe. This situation made it
possible for Henry, in 1176, to gain a concession; but in
doing this he was forced to a more formal allowance of the
church's claims over criminous clerks than he had yet
made. A papal legate was in England at the beginning
of the year, and he conceded that Henry could try clerks
in his own court for forest offences; on the other hand, he
received a letter from Henry to the pope in which the
king agreed that murderers of clerks should not be exempt
from punishment, and that, except for forest offences
and cases which grew out of a clerk's holding a lay fee
with a lay service attached, no clerks should be brought
in person before his courts.1 This concession may be
regarded as formally inaugurating "benefit of clergy."
The precise terms upon which the clergy enjoyed their
"benefit** varied from age to age, but, in general, they
became more lax. The core of "benefit of clergy" was
this: when an accusation was brought against a clerk in a
lay court, his bishop might appear and demand that he be
turned over to the church court for trial; bishops regularly
made this demand, and there could be no further punish-
ment than the church courts were competent to inflict.8
1 Adams, The Hisfoty of England (1066-1216), p. 319.
2 The strangest factor in the survival of this practice in England is that
it was out of harmony with the best authority in the church itself. Mait-
land says: ". . . that opinion, though owing to his (Becket's) martyr-
dom it was suffered to do immeasurable mischief in England by fostering
crime and crippling justice, was never consistently maintained by the