We have seen above occasional instances in which the accuser or plaintiff offered to substantiate his veracity by an appeal to the ordeal. This was an established rule with regard to the wager of battle, but not as respects the other forms of the judgment of God, which were regarded rather as means of defence than of attack. Still there are occasional instances of instructions for their employment by the accusing party. In the primitive laws of Russia, an accuser who could not substantiate his case with witnesses was obliged to undergo the ordeal of red-hot iron.[1231] In England it seems to have been within the discretion of the court to order it for either the accuser or the accused. A very singular case is recorded in 1202, in which Astin of Wispington accused Simon of Edlington of assaulting him and putting out an eye, when the court adjudged the red-hot iron ordeal and gave to the defendant the option whether he or the prosecutor should undergo it; Simon naturally preferred that his antagonist should try the dangerous experiment, and the result was that the case was settled without it.[1232] We have already seen (p. 385) that in some places where the accused succeeded in clearing himself by the ordeal the accuser was obliged to undergo it in order to determine the question of his perjury. Sometimes the ordeal was employed in connection with compurgation, both for prosecution and defence, to supplement the notorious imperfections of that procedure. Thus Archbishop Hincmar directs that cases of complaint against priests for dissolute life shall be supported by seven witnesses, of whom one must submit to the ordeal to prove the truth of his companions’ oaths, as a wholesome check upon perjury and subornation.[1233] With a similar object, the same prelate likewise enjoins it on compurgators chosen by the accused, on his failing to obtain the support of those who had been selected for him by his judge.[1234] Allied to this was a rule for its employment which was extensively adopted, allowing the accused the privilege of compurgation with conjurators in certain cases, only requiring him to submit to the ordeal on his failing to procure the requisite number of sponsors. Thus, in 794, a certain Bishop Peter, who was condemned by the Synod of Frankfort to clear himself, with two or three conjurators, of the suspicion of complicity in a conspiracy against Charlemagne, being unable to obtain them, one of his vassals offered to pass through the ordeal in his behalf, and on his success the bishop was reinstated.[1235] That this was strictly in accordance with usage is shown by a very early text of the Salic Law,[1236] as well as by a similar provision in the Ripuarian code.[1237] Among the Anglo-Saxons it likewise obtained, from the time of the earliest allusion to the ordeal occurring in their jurisprudence, down to the period of the Conquest.[1238] Somewhat similar in tendency was a regulation of Frederic Barbarossa, by which a slave suspected of