al the
crime which they are about to commit, and to avoid the interference of
their friends or of the officers of the law.

[Illustration: Ordeal Combat.]

[Sidenote: The ancient trial by combat.]

[Sidenote: Old representation of it.]

In the days, however, of the semi-savage knights and barons who
flourished so luxuriantly in the times of which we are writing, the
settlement of a dispute by single combat between the two parties to it
was an openly recognized and perfectly legitimate mode of arbitration,
and the trial of the question was conducted with forms and ceremonies
even more strict and more solemn than those which governed the
proceedings in regular courts of justice.

The engraving on the preceding page is a sort of rude emblematic
representation of such a trial, copied from a drawing in an ancient
manuscript. We see the combatants in the foreground, with the judges
and spectators behind.

[Sidenote: Henry Bolingbroke.]

It was to a public and solemn combat of this kind that Richard the
Second summoned his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, and his enemy, as
related in the last chapter. In that instance the combat was not
fought, the king having taken the case into his own hands, and
condemned both the parties before the contest was begun. But in
multitudes of other cases the trial was carried through to its
consummation in the death of one party, and the triumph and acquittal
of the other.

[Sidenote: Arrangements made.]

[Sidenote: Guards.]

Very many detailed and full accounts of these combats have come down
to us in the writings of the ancient chroniclers. I will here give a
description of one of them, as an example of this mode of trial, which
was fought in the public square in front of King Richard the Second's
palace, the king himself, all the principal nobles of the court, and a
great crowd of other persons being provided with seats around the area
as spectators of the fight. The nobles and knights were all dressed
in complete armor; and heralds, and squires, and guards were stationed
in great numbers to regulate the proceedings. It was on a bright
morning in June when the combat was fought, and the whole aspect of
the scene was that of a grand and joyful spectacle on a gala day.

[Sidenote: Great concourse of people.]

It was estimated that more people from the surrounding country came to
London on the occasion of this duel than at the time of the coronation
of the king. It took place about th