allusion to the ordeal, by Edward the Elder, it is provided that perjured persons, or those who had once been convicted, should not be deemed thereafter oath-worthy, but should be hurried to the ordeal; a regulation repeated with some variations in the laws of Ethelred, Cnut, and Henry I.[1244] The Carlovingian legislation establishes a similar principle,[1245] while the canons of Burckhardt show it to be still in force in the eleventh century.[1246] A hundred and fifty years later, the legislation of Flanders manifests the same tendency, the code granted to Bruges in 1190 providing that a first accusation of theft should be decided by witnesses, while a second was to be met by the cold-water ordeal.[1247] In the German municipal law of the thirteenth century, the same principle is observable. A man who had forfeited his legal privileges by conviction for theft or similar crimes was no longer admitted to the oath, but on subsequent accusations was compelled to choose between the hot iron, the cauldron, and a combat with a champion; and similarly an officer of the mint issuing false money was permitted the first time to swear to his ignorance, but on a second offence he had to submit to the ordeal. In the codes in force throughout Germany, indeed, previous suspicion was sufficient to send the accused to the ordeal in place of the oath.[1248] The contemporary jurisprudence of Spain has a somewhat similar provision, by which a woman accused of homicide could not be exposed to the ordeal unless she could be proved utterly abandoned, for which a curious standard was requisite;[1249] while for more serious crimes, such as sorcery or killing her husband, she was forced at once to the red-hot iron to prove her innocence. In the legislation of Charlemagne there is an elaborate provision, by which a man convicted seven times of theft was no longer allowed to escape on payment of a fine, but was required to undergo the ordeal of fire. If he succumbed, he was put to death; if he escaped unhurt, he was not discharged as innocent, but his lord was allowed to enter bail for his future good behavior[1250]—a mode at once of administering punishment and of ascertaining whether his death would be agreeable to Heaven. When we thus regard it as a penalty on those who by misconduct had forfeited the confidence of their fellow-men, the system loses part of its absurdity, in proportion as it departs from the principle under which it was established.