Sometimes no fore-witnesses were required; for example, to choose an obvious case, where the claim was for the restoration of stolen cattle, which had been traced by “hue and cry” to defendant’s house or byre. The presumption of guilt was here so strong as to render corroborative evidence unnecessary. The plaintiff’s unsupported oath was thus sufficient to put the defendant on his “trial.” On the other hand, in the absence alike of presumption and of witnesses swearing in support of plaintiff’s oath, the defendant escaped without any “trial” at all. ----- (4) Then came the judgment—the chief or “medial” judgment, so called to distinguish it from the less important final judgment or decree which came at a later stage. This medial judgment or “doom,” to use the Anglo-Saxon word, partook in no respect of the nature of the judgment of a modern tribunal. It came _before_ the proof or trial, not after it. It consisted indeed in decreeing whether or no, on the strength of the previous procedure, the defendant should be put to his proof at all; and if so, _what_ “proof” should be demanded. Now, the exact test to be appointed by the court varied somewhat, according to circumstances, but long-established custom had laid down with some exactitude a rule applicable to every case likely to occur; and, further, the possible modes of proof were limited to some four or five at the outside. In Anglo-Saxon times, these were mainly compurgation, ordeal, witnesses (whose functions were, however, widely different from those of witnesses in modern law), and charters. The Norman Conquest introduced for the new-comers, a form of proof previously unknown in England—"trial by combat"—which tended, for the upper classes at least, to supersede all earlier methods of procedure. The “proof,” of whatever kind it might be, thus appointed by the “judges” for the defendant’s performance was technically known as a “law” (Latin _lex_) in the sense of a “test” or “trial” or “task,” according to his success or failure in which his case should stand or fall.[144] ----- Footnote 144: See _infra_ under chapters 38 and 39, where the meaning of _lex_ is discussed. It will be apparent that to pronounce a “judgment” in this sense was a simple affair, a mere formality in the ordinary case, where room for dubiety could hardly be admitted; and thus it was possible for “judgment” to be delivered by all the members of a feudal court, or even by all the suitors present at a meeting of the hundred or shire-moot.