Seen in a historical context, the predominance of judicial discretion in sentencing is a relatively recent development. Early English common law did not allow the exercise of any discretion in sentencing for felony. The mandatory sentence provided by law in every case was death. The first inroads on this simple but severe system, in the direction of a discretionary system, may perhaps be traced to the development in the 17th century of the doctrine of ‘benefit of clergy’. The rule was that any man convicted of felony who was a clerk in holy orders was entitled to be discharged from the secular court with a view to being punished by the bishop. Records were not available of who was and who was not a clerk in holy orders, and the courts developed their own instant test of literacy for this purpose, working on the assumption that any one who could read was a clerk in holy orders. If the defendant was able to read from the Bible Psalm 51, verse 1, known for obvious reasons as the ‘neck verse’, he was entitled to be treated as a clerk in holy orders and would escape the death penalty. The legal rules surrounding this concept were gradually elaborated, and the scope it provided to achieve some mitigation of the harshness of the law, albeit in an arbitrary and illogical manner, was extended into the 18th century.