“In the fight, if either of the parties do give any sign of yielding; or if the king, being present, do cry ‘_Hoe_,’ the constable and the marshal do part them, and observe precisely who hath advantage or disadvantage, either of other at that instant; for if they should be awarded to fight again, they are to be put in the same posture as they were before. If the king take up the matter, they are brought honorably out of the lists, neither having precedency before the other. If the battle be performed, and one party be vanquished, then, in case of treason, the rails of the lists are broken down, and the party vanquished is drawn out at a horse-tail and carried presently to execution by the marshal.”[38] The older books abound in many illustrations where the appellee, when charged by a formal accusation, with some felony, claimed the wager of battle to establish his innocence.[39] Neilson refers to the single combat between Corbis and Orsus, fought in the presence of Scipio, for a principality in Spain.[40] And the traditional combat, in prehistoric Roman days, between the Horatti and the Curiatti is also cited, to show that the institution of trial by combat was not unknown to the Romans, at an early day.[41] Geoffrey of Monmouth, describes the battle between King Arthur and Flollo, the Roman Tribune, at the siege of Paris, to determine who would be the master of the realm, and this realistic story of the battle, on horses, with fixed lances and the interesting narration of how King Arthur, after his horse was killed under him, drove his sword through the helmet of Flollo and cut his head in two, reads like some story from the works of fiction.[42] Neilson notes[43] that in Mediaeval Germany, disputes between men and women were settled by combat, for chivalry does not seem to have penetrated into the warlike confines of this sturdy nation, at this period, although some notion of equalizing the contests between the weaker combatant and the stronger, obtained. The male was handicapped, in such contests, by placing him in a tub, sunk waist deep in the ground, with one hand tied behind his back. The woman was allowed a paving stone, sewed in the end of the long sleeve of her shift, or under garment and she was accorded the privilege of manouvering around her antagonist, at will, until she found a vulnerable point of attack.[44] Perhaps the earliest reference to the trial by battle, among the adjudicated English cases, is that of Wulfstan vs. Walter, of which Lea reports that the witnesses who saw the trial stood ready to prove their assertions regarding it, by “oath and battle.”[45]