In this case, the action was on a city by-law, for the penalty provided for the refusal of the defendant to serve as sheriff. According to the custom of London, the defendant offered to wage his law, with six good and reputable compurgators, but to this plea the plaintiff demurred, and in considering the issue of law, on the question of the right of the defendant to wage his law, in such an action, Baron Hatsell reviewed the older decisions bearing upon the defense of wager of law and maintained that it would lie in five certain cases only, “first, in debt on simple contract, which is the common case; secondly, in debt upon an award, upon a parole submission; thirdly, in an account against a receiver; fourthly, in detinue, and fifthly, in an amercement in a court baron, or other inferior court, not of record.” Lord Holt repudiated the reasoning which limited the Wager to any specific classes of actions, but maintained that the wager could only be made to depend upon other distinctions, growing out of the very nature of the cause of action and not the mere class to which it might belong. In the course of his opinion in this celebrated case, he observed: “This is the right difference, and not that which is made in the actions, viz., that it lies in one sort of action and not in another; but the true difference is when it is grounded on the defendant’s wrong; ... for if debt be brought, and the foundation of the action is the wrong of the defendant, wager of law will not lie.... The secrecy of the contract which raises the debt is the reason of the wager of law; but if the debt arises from a contract that is notorious, there shall be no wager of law.”[76] The great Chief Justice was far too independent to be bound by the dictum of some previous case, which did not commend itself to him, according to the touchstone of reason or logic. He had a naturally inquiring mind and sought to go deep into the mysteries of things. Refused credence to the absurd or allegiance to an arrogant authority and was too broad to be bound by mere doctrine, but of course could only judge according to the standards of his time. This decision marks the trend of judicial thought of the period to further limit and deny the wager of law, because of the fact that it was becoming to be considered contrary to the prevalent sense of right of the great mass of citizenship, to permit one who was sufficiently elastic in his conscience, to swear away the debt or obligation of another, just as formerly it had come to be regarded as wrong to permit the accused in a criminal case, to set aside the public law which he had violated, by means of the oaths of compurgators.