There is authority for the proposition that in the earliest times, the oath-helpers were necessarily kinsmen of the defendant.[9] The only obligation recognized by a defendant in either a civil or criminal case was to the injured party and no responsibility was predicated upon a duty owing to the state or to society at large. With the family as a unit, the person charged with a crime could summon his family to repulse an armed attack by the injured person and so he took them with him to the court, to defend him by their oaths.[10] When a person was accused of a crime sufficient to result in a blood-feud, his kinsmen were vitally interested in his acquittal and it is but natural that they proffered their help as oath-helpers for him, but in due course of time, the relatives alone were not required and the compurgators rather assumed the character of disinterested “character witnesses,” such as we see today, in all criminal cases, except that instead of swearing merely to the good reputation of the defendant, these compurgators made oath of their firm belief in his oath of innocence of the charge filed against him or of the cause of action set up by the injured party.[11] By the laws of Wihtraed,[12] in the seventh century, the king or a bishop could rebut an accusation by his own simple asservation, and the thane or priest by the simple oath, while the laity generally were required to undergo the formal procedure of waging their law by the regular number of compurgators. Mr. Reeves, in his History of English Law, says that Glanville does not mention the wager of law, as a mode of proof for the defendant in civil suits,[13] but in this the author must have meant to limit the statement to defenses only, for Glanville expressly describes the proceeding by the tenant, wherein he observes: “If he should deny all the summonses, he shall, as to each of them individually, corroborate his denial with the oaths of twelve. Should it happen on the day appointed that either of the compurgators fail, or should the person of either of them be justly excepted to, and the vacancy occasioned by either of these circumstances not filled up, the tenant shall, on account of his default, immediately lose his seisin. But, if the tenant thus completely disprove the summonses, he shall, on the same day, answer to the action.”[14] According to Sir Edward Coke, any one who waged his law, in a court of record, prior to _Magna Charta_, in England, was required to bring with him _Fideles Testes_,[15] and this learned author intimates that the number of compurgators was eleven, besides the principal,[16] while the author of “_Les Termes de la Ley_,” in describing the same ceremony, expressly states that the number of compurgators was twelve.[17]