Though not strictly a portion of our subject, the question is not without interest as to the power or obligation of the plaintiff or accuser to fortify his case with conjurators. There is little evidence of such a custom in primitive times, but one or two allusions to it in the _Leges Barbarorum_ show that it was occasionally practised. Some of the earlier texts of the Salic law contain a section providing that in certain cases the complainant shall sustain his action with a number of conjurators varying with the amount at stake; a larger number is required of the defendant in reply; and it is presumable that the judges weighed the probabilities on either side and rendered a decision accordingly.[263] As this is omitted in the later revisions of the law, it probably was not widely practised, or regarded as of much importance. Among the Baioarians, a claimant of an estate produced six conjurators who took the oath with him, and whose united efforts could be rebutted by the defendant with a single competent witness.[264] These directions are so precise that there can be no doubt that the custom prevailed to a limited extent among certain tribes, and a clause in the Decree of Childebert in 597, providing that the oaths of five or seven impartial men of good character shall convict a thief or malefactor, would seem evidently to refer to conjurators and not to witnesses.[265] In the treaty between Childebert and Clotair in 593, an accuser in case of theft is obliged to give twelve conjurators, half of them selected by himself, to swear that a theft has really taken place.[266] That it was, indeed, more generally employed than the scanty references to it in the codes would indicate, may be inferred from one of the ecclesiastical forgeries which Charlemagne was induced to adopt and promulgate. According to this, no accusation against a bishop could be successful unless supported by seventy-two witnesses, all of whom were to be men of good repute; forty-four were required to substantiate a charge against a priest, thirty-seven in the case of a deacon, and seven when a member of the inferior grades was implicated.[267] Though styled witnesses in the text, the number required is so large that they evidently could have been only conjurators, with whom the complainant supported his oath of accusation, and the fabrication of such a law would seem to show that the practice of employing such means of substantiating a charge was familiar to the minds of men.