Enlightened legislators were not slow in seconding the efforts of the papacy. Perhaps the earliest instance of secular legislation directed against the ordeal, except some charters granted to communes, is an edict of Philip Augustus in 1200, bestowing certain privileges on the scholars of the University of Paris, by which he ordered that a citizen accused of assaulting a student shall not be allowed to defend himself either by the duel or the water ordeal.[1350] In England, a rescript of Henry III., dated January 27, 1219, directs the judges then starting on their circuits to employ other modes of proof—“seeing that the judgment of fire and water is forbidden by the Church of Rome.”[1351] A few charters and confirmations, dated some years subsequently, allude to the privilege of administering it; but Matthew of Westminster, when enumerating, under date of 1250, the remarkable events of the half century, specifies its abrogation as one of the occurrences to be noted,[1352] and we may conclude that thenceforth it was practically abandoned throughout the kingdom. This is confirmed by the fact that Bracton, whose treatise was written a few years later, refers only to the wager of battle as a legal procedure, and, when alluding to other forms, speaks of them as things of the past. About the same time, Alexander II. of Scotland forbade its use in cases of theft.[1353] Nearly contemporary was the Neapolitan Code, promulgated in 1231, by authority of the Emperor Frederic II., in which he not only prohibits the use of the ordeal in all cases, but ridicules, in a very curious passage, the folly of those who could place confidence in it.[1354] We may conclude, however, that this was not effectual in eradicating it, for, fifty years later, Charles of Anjou found it necessary to repeat the injunction.[1355] About the same time, Waldemar II. of Denmark, Hako Hakonsen of Iceland and Norway; and soon afterwards Birger Jarl of Sweden, followed the example.[1356] In Frisia we learn that the inhabitants still refused to obey the papal mandates, and insisted on retaining the red-hot iron, a contumacy which Emo, the contemporary Abbot of Wittewerum, cites as one of the causes of the terrible inundation of 1219;[1357] though a century later the Laws of Upstallesboom show that ordeals of all kinds had fallen into desuetude.[1358] In France, we find no formal abrogation promulgated; but the contempt into which the system had fallen is abundantly proved by the fact that in the ordinances and books of practice issued during the latter half of the century, such as the _Établissements_ of St. Louis, the _Conseil_ of Pierre de Fontaines, the _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_ of Beaumanoir, and the _Livres de Jostice et de Plet_, its existence is not recognized even by a prohibitory allusion, the judicial duel thenceforward monopolizing the province of irregular evidence. Indeed, a Latin version of the Coutumier of Normandy, dating