claiming the benefit a
second time. The privilege was extended to peers, even if they could not
read, in 1547, and to women, partially in 1622 and fully in 1692. The
partial exemption claimed by the Church did not apply to the more
atrocious crimes, and hence offences came to be divided into clergyable
and unclergyable. According to the common practice in England of working
out modern improvements through antiquated forms, this exemption was
made the means of modifying the severity of the criminal law. It became
the practice to claim and be allowed the benefit of clergy; and when it
was the intention by statute to make a crime really punishable with
death, it was awarded "without benefit of clergy." The benefit of clergy
was abolished by a statute of 1827, but as this statute did not repeal
that of 1547, under which peers were given the privilege, a further
statute was passed in 1841 putting peers on the same footing as commons
and clergy.

For a full account of benefit of clergy see Pollock and Maitland,
_History of English Law_, vol. i. 424-440; also Stephen, _History of
the Criminal Law of England_, vol. i.; E. Friedberg, _Corpus juris
canonici_ (Leipzig, 1879-1881).

CLERGY RESERVES, in Canada. By the act of 1791, establishing the
provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, the British government set apart
one-eighth of all the crown lands for the support of "a Protestant
clergy." These reservations, after being for many years a
stumbling-block to the economic development of the province, and the
cause of much bitter political and ecclesiastical controversy, were
secularized by the Canadian parliament in 1854, and the proceeds applied
to other purposes, chiefly educational. Owing to the wording of the
imperial act, the amount set apart is often stated as one-seventh, and
was sometimes claimed as such by the clergy.

CLERK[1] (from A.S. _cleric_ or _clerc_, which, with the similar Fr.
form, comes direct from the Lat. _clericus_), in its original sense, as
used in the civil law, one who had taken religious orders of whatever
rank, whether "holy" or "minor." The word _clericus_ is derived from the
Greek [Greek: klerikos], "of or pertaining to an inheritance," from
[Greek: koeros], "lot," "allotment," "estate," "inheritance"; but the
authorities are by no means agreed in which sense the root is connected
with the sense of the derivative, some conceiving that the original idea
was that the clergy received