Allusions have occurred above to the employment of champions, a peculiarity of these combats which received an application sufficiently extended to deserve some special notice.[576] It has been seen that those unable to wield the sword or club were not therefore exempted from the duel, and even the scantiest measure of justice would require that they should have the right to delegate their vindication to some more competent vehicle of the Divine decision. This would seem originally to have been the office of some member of the family, as in the cognate procedure of sacramental purgation. Among the Alamanni, for instance, a woman when accused could be defended by a kinsman _cum tracta spata_;[577] the same rule is prescribed by the Lombard law,[578] and by that of the Angli and Werini;[579] while the universal principle of family unity renders the presumption fair that it prevailed throughout the other races in whose codes it is not specifically indicated. Restricted to cases of disability, the use of champions was a necessity to the battle ordeal; but at a very early period the practice received a remarkable extension, which was directly in conflict with the original principles of the judicial duel, in permitting able-bodied antagonists to put forward substitutes, whether connected with them or not by ties of blood, who fought the battle for their principals. With regard to this there appears to have been a considerable diversity of practice among the races of primitive barbarians. The earliest Frisian laws not only grant unlimited permission for their employment, but even allow them to be hired for money.[580] The laws of the Franks, of the Alamanni, and of the Saxons make no allusion to such a privilege, and apparently expect the principal to defend his rights himself, and yet an instance occurs in 590, where, in a duel fought by order of Gontran, the defendant was allowed to intrust his cause to his nephew, though, as he was accused of killing a stag in the king’s forest, physical infirmity could hardly have been pleaded.[581] From some expressions made use of by St. Agobard, in his onslaught on the ordeal of battle, we may fairly presume that, under Louis le Débonnaire, the employment of champions, in the Burgundian law, was, if not forbidden, at least unusual as respects the defendant, even in cases where age or debility unfitted him for the combat, while it was allowed as a matter of course to the appellant.[582] On the other hand, the Baioarian law, which favored the duel more than any of the other cognate codes, alludes to the employment of champions in every reference to it, and with the Lombards the judicial combat and the champion seem to have been likewise convertible terms even with regard to defendants.[583] In a charter of the latter half of the tenth century in France, recording a judicial duel to decide a contest concerning property, the judge, in ordering the combat, calls upon the antagonists to produce skilled champions to