France seems to have been even more addicted to this superstition. About 1580 President Bertrand d’Argentré, in his Commentaries on the Customs of Brittany, treats it as an indisputable fact and one affording good evidence.[1158] In Picardy we are told it was constantly used by magistrates, it was approved by the courts in Bordeaux, and Chassanée, whose authority in Burgundy was great, argues that its occurrence justifies the torture of the accused without further evidence.[1159] Spain likewise was not exempt from it. A celebrated case is cited in the books as occurring in Aragon, where the accused was brought before the corpse of the victim in the public square and appealed to God to perform a miracle if he were guilty, whereupon the body raised its right arm, pointed with its fingers to the several wounds and then to the accused; this was regarded as sufficient proof, and under sentence of the Council of Aragon the culprit was executed. Another case which occurred at Ledesma, near Salamanca, shows the existence of the belief in Castile.[1160] English colonists brought the superstition across the Atlantic, where it has never been fairly eradicated from the popular mind. In January, 1680, in Accomac County, Virginia, a new-born illegitimate child of “Mary, daughter of Sarah, wife of Paul Carter” died and was buried. It was nearly six weeks before suspicion was aroused, when the coroner impanelled a jury of twelve matrons, whose verdict recorded that Sarah Carter was brought to touch the corpse without result, but when Paul Carter touched it “immediately whilst he was stroaking ye childe ye black and settled places above ye body of ye childe grew fresh and red so that blud was ready to come through ye skin of ye childe.” On the strength of this verdict an indictment was found against Paul Carter, but with what result the records do not show.[1161] Nearly a century later, in 1767, the coroner’s jury of Bergen County, N. J., was summoned to view the body of one Nicholas Tuers, whose death had led to suspicion of murder. Johannes Demarest, the coroner, attests that he had no belief in bier-right and paid no attention to the experiment, when one of the jury touched the body without result. At length a slave named Harry, who had been suspected without proof, was brought forward for the trial when he heard an exclamation “He is the man,” and was told that the body had bled when touched by Harry. He then ordered the slave to place his hand on its face, when about a tablespoonful of blood flowed from each nostril, and Harry confessed the murder.[1162] So recently as 1833 a man named Getter was hanged in Pennsylvania for the murder of his wife, and among the evidence which was allowed to go to the jury on the trial was that of a female witness, who swore “If my throat was to be cut I could tell, before God Almighty, that the deceased smiled when he (the murderer) touched her. I swore this before the justice, and also that she bled considerably.