It was the judgment of the court, in the above case, however, that brought about the repeal of the right of trial by battle, in England, by the 59’ George III., c. 46.[61] By this statute it was enacted that: “Appeals of murder, treason, felony and other offenses, and the manner of proceeding therein, have been found to be oppressive; and the _trial by battle_, in any suit, is a mode of trial unfit to be used; and it is expedient that the same should be wholly abolished.” Accordingly, the act proceeded to abolish all appeals, in criminal cases and, “In any writ of right now depending, or hereafter to be brought, the tenant shall not be received to wage battle, nor shall issue be joined, or trial be had by battle in any writ of right.” Trial by battle was abolished in France, in 1260, by the good Saint Louis, for the reason that it often happened that in the contests between a rich man and a poor man, the former hired all the champions, and left the latter without help.[62] The right to a trial by battle was last recognized, in Scotland, near the close of the sixteenth century,[63] so it survived in England, after it had long ceased to exist, as a mode of judicial proceeding, in the other European countries. Trial by battle has ever been an interesting theme in English literature. And it is little wonder that this sturdy struggle for justice, according to the light then obtaining, should be selected as the climax of the vivid plots, by the masters of poesy and fiction, depicting the chivalry of the age “when knighthood was in flower.” If human interest were lacking in this antique procedure of the past as we read of it in the unadorned details of the trials of the period, certainly no one can fail to entertain the deepest concern for the fate of the principals we meet with in this struggle for justice, as portrayed by the poets and novelists of English literature. And instead of being overdrawn, such representations are often but true portrayals of many of the concrete cases that have come down to us, of the trials by battle, of the past centuries. The song of Roland, chanted at the battle of Hastings, in the eleventh century, was really attuned to the theme of wager by battle, and from the appeal, to the conclusion of the duel, between Pinabel and Thierry, before Charles the Great, resulting in the punishment of the treason of Ganelon, for the fall of Roland, the legal procedure of wager by battle of chivalry is truthfully presented, even as the law writers of the period would reproduce the history of such a trial.