Saved by the book

I had forgotten about this. In old English law, you could escape capital punishment by proving oneself literate. From Ben Jonson, Britain’s first literary celebrity? by Brian Vickers.

In his turbulent career Jonson had many scrapes with the law, including prosecution for manslaughter, having killed the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel in Hoxton Fields. Jonson escaped the gallows thanks to the old law excusing those who could read the so-called “neck-verse” from Psalm 51 as a test of literacy. In several plays, Jonson echoes his own experience with allusions to characters being “saved by the book”.