Note 43 — EDITOR'S PREFACE.
Reading edition
The king was willing that the clerk guilty of murder or robbery should be degraded before he was hanged, but hanged he should be. The archbishop insisted that he should be safe "a læsione membrorum." Degradation was in itself so dreadful a punishment, that to hang also for the same crime was a double penalty. "If he returned to his vomit," after degradation, "he might be hanged."—Compare Grim, p. 30.