In April, 1435, Agnes Archer was indicted for the alleged murder of Alice Colynbourgh, at Winchelsea, whom she was charged with having stabbed five times in the throat, with a knife. The defendant, when arraigned for this crime entered a plea of not guilty, by declaring, as the report of the case records it: “I am not guilty of thoo dedys, ne noon of hem, God help me so.” And when interrogated by the Judge as to how she would acquit herself of this charge, she replied: “By God and by my neighbors of this town,” so the charge being one which brought the case within the rule of the “Great Law,” she was required to acquit herself by the oaths of thirty-six compurgators.[68] In 1440, in a suit for board and lodging furnished the defendant by the plaintiff, one Counselor, Yelverton, for the plaintiff, contended that the defendant was not entitled to his wager of law, in this action, but the justices held that wager of law would lie in a suit for board and lodging.[69] During the reign of Henry VI., in the year 1454, quite a memorable legal battle was waged concerning the right of a defendant, in a real action, to wage his law upon a plea of non-summons. The plaintiff demurred to this plea and the justices were divided upon the propriety of recognizing the plea. Chief Justice Priscot and his associates, Danvers and Danby, overruled the demurrer to this plea, holding that the defendant could urge his wager of law in a real action, while admitting that the practice had been otherwise. The minority of the court, however, dissented from this view, much as the minority frequently dissent in modern times and Moile and Ayshton earnestly pressed their views upon the majority of the court, for the reason that, “All our law is directed by usage or statute; it has been used that no one wages his law in trespass, and the contrary in debt; so that we should adjudge according to the use.”[70] In the year 1492, one Sebastian Giglis complained to the Chancellor against Robert Welby, that complainant had persuaded a third party to advance a certain sum of money to Welby, who promised to repay the loan and then when he was sued therefor, by the creditor, he had waged his law and the result was that complainant had been compelled to pay the loan, so advanced, at his instance, to Welby. In his answer to this plea, Welby admitted the loan, but set up that he had procured the money for King Richard III., who had received and used the money and that the receipt given was a mere memorandum of the transaction, but not under seal, and he attempted to wage his law to this debt. The court refused to recognize the wager of law in this case, but held that in as much as the plaintiff had paid the debt for money had and received by the defendant, and since the defendant admitted the debt, and the receipt of the money, it was immaterial that he had given it to another, and adjudged that he should pay the plaintiff, and that no wager of law would lie in such a case.[71]