Among other races confidence in its ability to supplement absent or deficient testimony was manifested in another form—the _juramentum supermortuum_—which was employed by various nations, at wide intervals of time. Thus, in the earliest legislation of the Anglo-Saxons, we find that when the defendant or an important witness was dead, the oath which he would have taken or the deposition which he would have made was obtained by proceeding to his tomb, where a certain number of conjurators swore as to what he could or would have done if alive.[149] Two centuries later, the same custom is alluded to in the Welsh laws of Hoel Dda,[150] and even as late as the thirteenth century it was still in force throughout Germany.[151] There were other cases in which evidence of any kind was almost impossible, and in these the wager of law offered a convenient resource. Thus, Frederic II., in 1235, decreed that a man harboring an outlaw should himself be outlawed, but he was allowed to prove with six conjurators that he was ignorant of the outlawry.[152] A remarkable use of conjurators to confirm the evidence of witnesses occurs in 850 in a dispute between Cantius, Bishop of Siena, and Peter, Bishop of Arezzo, concerning certain parishes claimed by both. The occasion was a solemn one, for it was before a council held in Rome presided over jointly by Pope Leo IV. and the Emperor Louis II. Peter relied upon written charters, while Cantius produced witnesses. The Emperor pronounced the claim of the latter to be just, when he and twelve priests swore that the oaths of the witnesses were true and without deceit, whereupon the disputed parishes were adjudged to him.[153] The employment of compurgators, however, depended frequently upon the degree of crime alleged, or the amount at stake. Thus, in many codes, trivial offences or small claims were disposed of by the single oath of the defendant, while more important cases required compurgators, whose numbers increased with the magnitude of the matter in question. This principle is fairly illustrated in a charter granted to the Venetians in the year 1111 by Henry V. In suits which involved only the value of a silver pound, the oath of the party was sufficient; but if the claim amounted to twelve pounds or more, then twelve chosen men were requisite to substantiate the oath of negation.[154] In England in the thirteenth century we find compurgation very generally employed in the manorial courts for the settlement of petty criminal actions. So general was its use, indeed, that it obtained the name of “law,” as the legal method _par excellence_, and the process is curtly described in the reports as “facere legem,” “esse ad legem,” “vadiare legem,” whence is derived the term “wager of law.” The number of compurgators was generally two or five, and they seem to have been left, as a rule, to the choice of the defendant, so that failure to procure the requisite number was very unusual.[155]