of our Saxon ancestors throughput the kingdom,
yet there was a considerable difference, in many material points,
between the customs of the several shires: nay, that in different manors
subsisted a variety of laws not reconcilable with each other, some of
which custom, that caused them, has abrogated; others have been
overruled by laws or public judgment to the contrary; not a few subsist
to this time.

[Sidenote: Purgation by oath.]

[Sidenote: By ordeal.]

The Saxon laws, imperfect and various as they were, served in some
tolerable degree a people who had by their Constitution an eye on each
other's concerns, and decided almost all matters of any doubt amongst
them by methods which, however inadequate, were extremely simple. They
judged every controversy either by the conscience of the parties, or by
the country's opinion of it, or what they judged an appeal to
Providence. They were unwilling to submit to the trouble of weighing
contradictory testimonies; and they were destitute of those critical
rules by which evidence is sifted, the true distinguished from the
false, the certain from the uncertain. Originally, therefore, the
defendant in the suit was put to his oath, and if on oath he denied the
debt or the crime with which he was charged, he was of course acquitted.
But when the first fervors of religion began to decay, and fraud and the
temptations to fraud to increase, they trusted no longer to the
conscience of the party. They cited him to an higher tribunal,--the
immediate judgment of God. Their trials were so many conjurations, and
the magical ceremonies of barbarity and heathenism entered into law and
religion. This supernatural method of process they called God's Dome; it
is generally known by the name of _Ordeal_, which in the Saxon language
signifies the Great Trial. This trial was made either by fire or water:
that by fire was principally reserved for persons of rank; that by water
decided the fate of the vulgar; sometimes it was at the choice of the
party. A piece of iron, kept with a religious veneration in some
monastery, which claimed this privilege as an honor, was brought forth
into the church upon the day of trial; and it was there again
consecrated to this awful purpose by a form of service still extant. A
solemn mass was performed; and then the party accused appeared,
surrounded by the clergy, by his judges, and a vast concourse of people,
suspended and anxious for the event; all that assisted