rather than just mumble their way through the familiar ‘neck-verse’ in a cha-
rade that must so often have served as the reading test—or to insist on the rule
that clergy could be granted once only, was not necessarily to condemn them to
death, but rather to make it possible to sentence them to the more serious pun-
ishment by way of a conditional pardon. The few women eligible to plead clergy
were not required to prove their literacy. But they, as well as men, could be de-
nied clergy if they had been branded earlier. For the most part, the judges sought
to deny clergy to men: eighty-seven in our Sample failed the reading test or were
found to have been clergied earlier and were thus faced with the possibility of
being condemned to death. In fact thirteen men were so sentenced. Seventy-
four were in effect pardoned ahead of time by agreeing to opt for transportation.
This was clearly the outcome desired by the judges—the imposition of a pun-
ishment that removed these men from the community. As was said about eight
offenders dealt with in this way at the Old Bailey in 1693 , they were ‘held to strict
reading in order to Transportation, if their Majesties so please, to prevent the
danger of further mischief to their Majesties Subjects, in case they could have
been set at large’.^109 Five women were similarly sentenced in the sessions
sampled between 1663 and 1689.^110
The men and women who found themselves manipulated into transporta-
tion in the decades after 1660 were perhaps grateful to opt for this lesser evil
since the alternative they faced was the death penalty. But manipulated they
were, and their agreement to be transported—an agreement that was essential
if their removal was to be legal—was in effect extorted from them.^111 The court
record speaks of their having ‘petitioned’ or ‘asked for’ transportation. But they
petitioned in the face of a more serious alternative, a message clearly conveyed
before sentence was passed. An Old Bailey case in 1674 gives some sense of the
negotiation that might surround a denial of clergy. William Taylor, charged with
murder, was convicted of manslaughter, but only because the presiding judge,
the lord mayor, insisted that the jury reconsider their initial verdict of not guilty.
The mayor was obviously persuaded ofTaylor’s guilt, for when it came time for
sentencing he asked him ‘if he would take transportation’. His entirely inappro-
priate answer was that ‘he would be tried by God and his country’, perhaps
The Old Bailey in the Late Seventeenth Century 303(^109) An Account of the Malefactors that Received the Benefit ofTheir Majesties... Pardon at... the Old Bailey...
11 December 1693 ( 1693 ). It is notable that that formulation makes pardon and transportation seem entirely
routine and essentially in the hands of the judges at that point.
(^110) For further evidence on the uses of the reading test to create the punishment of transportation in
this period, see Beattie, Crime and the Courts, 474 – 5.
(^111) This is the significance of the clause in a royal warrant to the sheriffs of London in 1667 authoriz-
ing them to deliver Charles Lawrence and six other convicts in Newgate to a merchant to be transported
‘with their full consent’ (CSPD 1667 , p. 250 ). When Jane Jones refused to leave the country after being
convicted and sentenced to death in 1663 , and was then pardoned upon condition of transportation,
she would have been hanged if she had not made good her claim to be pregnant (SP 29 / 97 , fo. 188 ).
The requirement that the prisoner’s approval was necessary was confirmed by the Habeas Corpus Act
( 31 Chas II, c. 2 ( 1678 ), s. 12 ).