accordingly deposed.[174] Incidents like this, however, did not destroy confidence in the system, for, some sixty years later, we find Innocent II. ordering the Bishop of Trent, when similarly accused of simony, to clear himself with the oaths of two bishops and three abbots or monks.[175] The comparative value attached to the oaths of conjurators is illustrated by the provisions which are occasionally met with, regulating the cases in which they were employed in default of witnesses, or in opposition to them. Thus, in the Baioarian law, the oath of one competent witness is considered to outweigh those of six conjurators;[176] and among the Lombards, an accusation of murder which could be met with three witnesses required twelve conjurators as a substitute.[177] It is therefore evident that conjurators were in no sense witnesses, that they were not expected to give testimony, and that they merely expressed their confidence in the veracity of their principal. It may consequently at first sight appear somewhat unreasonable that they should be held guilty of perjury and subject to its penalties in case of unluckily sustaining the wrong side of a cause. It is probably owing to this apparent injustice that some writers have denied that they were involved in the guilt of their principal, and among others the learned Meyer has fallen into this error.[178] The proof, however, is too clear for dispute. We have already seen that the oath was an unqualified assertion of the justice of the side espoused, without reservation justifying the escape of the compurgators from the charge of false swearing, and one or two incidental references have been made to the punishments inflicted on them when subsequently convicted of perjury. The code of the Alamanni recognized the guilt involved in such cases when it denied the privilege of compurgation to any one who had previously been more than once convicted of crime, giving as a reason the desire to save innocent persons from incurring the sin of perjury.[179] Similar evidence is derived from a regulation promulgated by King Liutprand in the Lombard Law, by which a man nominated as a conjurator, and declining to serve, was obliged to swear that he dared not take the oath for fear of his soul.[180] A case in point occurs in the life of St. Boniface, whose fellow-laborer Adalger in dying left his property to the church. The graceless brothers of the deceased disputed the bequest, and offered to make good their claim to the estate by the requisite number of oaths. The holy man ordered them to swear alone, in order not to be concerned in the destruction of their conjurators, and on their unsupported oaths gave up the property.[181]