of the same country in the fourteenth, perhaps even in the following century; during which period the kingdom, at any rate in its more settled and civilized quarters, had decidedly retrograded rather than advanced from its condition in the thirteenth century. Amongst the regulations either introduced, or confirmed, by David, at any rate beyond the Scots-water, the system of the _Voisinage_, or _Visnet_, holds a prominent place; through which the older forms of trial were gradually supplanted by the verdict of “the good men and true” of the neighbourhood. Two principles seem to have lain at the root of the whole system of justice--compurgation, and the ordeal. As individuality was unrecognized, or helpless, the testimony of a single witness was, except under certain circumstances, inadmissible; though the oath of a man of rank, or of a churchman, after the church had acquired worldly station, outweighed the oath of an inferior, and seems often to have been reckoned according to the proportion of their wergilds. Thus, amongst the Anglo-Saxons, two thanes appear to have answered to twelve compurgators of lesser note; five thanes to the triple oath of thirty in Wessex, though the number of the triple oath varied in Wessex, Mercia, and the Danelage; and a similar principle is traceable in the laws of the kindred Old Saxons of the Continent.[296] _Compurgation_ was originally the duty of the kin, and the nearest relatives who received, or paid, the wergild were bound to come forward to take oath in behalf of any member of the brotherhood, every accusation being thus supported or repelled. The number of compurgators varied according to the importance of the case, judgment going against the party whose kin declined to come forward, or who failed in obtaining the required number. The accusation frequently had to be repelled by a number of compurgators doubling the amount of those who supported the charge; and on some occasions, to judge from the custom of the Imperial Benefice, each party went on increasing in number until the greater _tourbe_, the most numerous body of compurgators, carried the day; or else a final appeal seems to have been made to the ordeal.[297] Witnesses, in the modern sense of the word, are seldom or never alluded to; had they been examined, and borne testimony against a man, as at present, they would have legally had to “bear the feud” of his kindred--a danger actually provided against by one of William’s laws. In an age in which the duty of revenge was amongst the paramount obligations of the family tie, the kindred, in such a case, were only too ready to wreak their vengeance on all through whom their kinsman suffered; an offence which was visited with the highest fine for a breach of “the kings peace,” except the victim’s kindred had consented to the deed--had, in other words, declined “to bear the feud.” The extent to which the blood-feud was acknowledged, at