These principles were adopted as the fundamental basis of all legal procedures in Wales. Every prosecution and defence required relics to give validity to the oaths of both parties, and even in the fifteenth century a collection of laws declares that a plaintiff coming into court without a relic on which to make his oath, not only lost his cause, but incurred a fine of nine-score pence. The same tendency is shown in the rule by which a man who suspected another of theft could go to him with a relic, and in the presence of witnesses demand an oath of negation, a failure in which was a conviction of the crime imputed, without further trial.[60] In the same spirit, ecclesiastical authority was even found to admit that a powerful motive might extenuate the sin of perjury. If committed voluntarily, seven years of penitence were enjoined for its absolution; if involuntarily, sixteen months, while if to preserve life or limb, the offence could be washed out with four months.[61] When such doctrines were received and acted upon, we can hardly wonder at the ingenious device which the sensitive charity of King Robert the Pious imitated from the duplicity of Ebroin, to save the souls of his friends. He provided two reliquaries on which to receive their oaths—one for his magnates, splendidly fabricated of crystal and gold, but entirely empty, the other for the common herd, plainer and enshrining a bird’s egg. Knowing in advance that his lieges would be forsworn, he thus piously sought to save them from sin in spite of themselves, and his monkish panegyrist is delighted in recounting this holy deceit.[62]