firm, he shall find another
who will do it for him. If one of them shall be vanquished he shall pay
a fine of forty shillings to the King. If an Englishman summon a
Frenchman, and be unwilling to prove his charge by judgment or by wager
of battle, I will, nevertheless, that the Frenchman purge himself by an
informal oath."

In subsequent reigns wager of battle was infinitely more common, and
great encouragement was given to it by the martial race, whose ideas and
habits were imposed on the subject population. The principles were
established and the procedure regulated by the "Assises de Jerusalem"
(1099), whose ordinances were received and recognized throughout Europe
as a code of law and honour. For a general statement of conditions and
effects we cannot do better than turn to the pages of the almost
impeccable Gibbon.

"The trial by battle," he says, "was established in all criminal cases
which affected the life, or limb, or honour, of any person; and in all
civil transactions of or above the value of one mark of silver. It
appears that in criminal cases the combat was the privilege of the
accuser, who, except in the charge of treason, avenged his personal
injury, or the death of those persons whom he had a right to represent;
but wherever, from the nature of the charge, testimony could be
obtained, it was necessary for him to produce witnesses of the fact. In
civil causes the combat was not allowed as the means of establishing the
claim of the demandant; but he was obliged to produce witnesses, who
had, or assumed to have, knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the
privilege of the defendant, because he charged the witness with an
attempt by perjury to take away his right. He came therefore to be in
the same position as the appellant in criminal cases. It was not, then,
as a mode of proof that the combat was received, nor as making negative
evidence (according to the supposition of Montesquieu), but in every
case the right to offer battle was founded on the right to pursue by
arms the redress of an injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the
same principle, and with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions
were only allowed to women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty.
The consequence of a defeat was death to the person accused, or to the
champion, or witness, as well as to the accuser himself; but in civil
cases the demandant was punished with infamy and the loss of his suit,
while his witne