gnised his
champion with the due formalities, but the plaintiff did not appear.
Without his presence and authority the combat could not take place; and
his absence being considered an abandonment of his claim, he was declared
to be non-suited, and barred for ever from renewing his suit before any
other tribunal whatever.

[Illustration: LORD BACON.]

The queen appears to have disapproved personally of this mode of settling
a disputed claim, but her judges and legal advisers made no attempt to
alter the barbarous law. The practice of private duelling excited more
indignation, from its being of every-day occurrence. In the time of James
I. the English were so infected with the French madness, that Bacon, when
he was attorney-general, lent the aid of his powerful eloquence to effect
a reformation of the evil. Informations were exhibited in the Star Chamber
against two persons, named Priest and Wright, for being engaged, as
principal and second, in a duel, on which occasion he delivered a charge
that was so highly approved of by the Lords of the Council, that they
ordered it to be printed and circulated over the country, as a thing "very
meet and worthy to be remembered and made known unto the world." He began
by considering the nature and greatness of the mischief of duelling. "It
troubleth peace--it disfurnisheth war--it bringeth calamity upon private
men, peril upon the state, and contempt upon the law. Touching the cause
of it," he observed, "that the first motive of it, no doubt, is a false
and erroneous imagination of honour and credit; but then, the seed of this
mischief being such, it is nourished by vain discourses and green and
unripe conceits. Hereunto may be added, that men have almost lost the true
notion and understanding of fortitude and valour. For fortitude
distinguisheth of the grounds of quarrel whether they be just; and not
only so, but whether they be worthy, and setteth a better price upon men's
lives than to bestow them idly. Nay, it is weakness and disesteem of a
man's self to put a man's life upon such liedger performances. A man's
life is not to be trifled with; it is to be offered up and sacrificed to
honourable services, public merits, good causes, and noble adventures. It
is in expense of blood as it is in expense of money. It is no liberality
to make a profusion of money upon every vain occasion, neither is it
fortitude to make effusion of blood, except the cause of it be worth."[64]

[64