employing champions seems never to have received much encouragement. By a law of Alexander II., about the year 1250, it appears that a noble had the privilege of putting forward a substitute; but if a peasant challenged a noble, he was obliged to appear personally, unless his lord undertook the quarrel for him and presented the champion as from himself.[638] The tendency exhibited by the English law in distinguishing between civil and criminal cases is also manifested elsewhere. Thus, in France and the Frankish kingdoms of the East, there were limitations placed by law on the employment of champions in prosecutions for crime,[639] while in civil actions there appear to have been, at least in France, no restrictions whatever.[640] This distinction between civil and criminal practice is very clearly enunciated by Pierre de Fontaines, who states that in appeal of judgment the appellant in criminal cases is bound to show satisfactory cause for employing a champion, while in civil affairs the right to do so requires no argument.[641] In practice, however, it is doubtful whether there was any effectual bar to their use in any case, for the Monk of St. Denis, in praising St. Louis for suppressing the battle-trial, gives as one of the benefits of its abrogation, the removal of the abuse by which a rich man could buy all the champions of the vicinity, so that a poorer antagonist had no resource to avoid the loss of life or heritage.[642] This hiring of champions, moreover, was legally recognized as a necessity attendant upon the privilege of employing them.[643] High rank, or a marked difference between the station of parties to an action, was also admitted as justifying the superior in putting forward a champion in his place.[644] Local variations, however, are observable in the customs regulating these matters. Thus the municipal laws of Reims, in the fourteenth century, not only restrict the admission of champions in criminal matters to cases in which age or physical disability may incapacitate the principals from personally taking part in the combat, but also require the accused to swear that the impediment has supervened since the date of the alleged offence; and even this was of no avail if the prosecutor had included in his appeal of battle an assertion that such disability had existed at the time specified.[645] Witnesses obliged to support their testimony by the duel were not only subject to the same restrictions, but in substituting a hired gladiator were obliged to swear that they had vainly sought among their friends for some one to assume the office voluntarily.[646] The whole tenor of these provisions, indeed, manifests a decided intention to surround the employment of champions with every practicable impediment. In Béarn, again, the appellant in cases of treason had a right to decide whether the defendant should be allowed to put forward a substitute, and from the expressions in the text it may be inferred that in the selection