Among the heathen Northmen, as we have seen, every pleader, whether plaintiff or defendant, was obliged to take a preliminary oath on the sacred _stalla hringr_, or altar ring, duly bathed in the blood of an ox sacrificed for the purpose. This custom was preserved in England, where the Anglo-Saxon laws required, except in trivial cases, a “fore-oath” from the accuser (_forath, antejuramentum, præjuramentum_), and William the Conqueror, in his compilation of the laws of Edward the Confessor, shows that this was sometimes strengthened by requiring the addition of conjurators, who were in no sense witnesses, since their oath had reference, not to the facts of the case, but solely to the purity of intention on the part of the accuser.[268] Indications of the same procedure are to be found in the collection known as the laws of Henry I.[269] Probably to the development of this may be attributed the peculiar device of the _secta_ already referred to (p. 84), consisting of those who supported the plaintiff by their oaths while in no sense absolute witnesses. They were not even examined unless the defendant demanded it. The bringing of the _secta_ or suit remained a matter of form long after the actual production of the witnesses had become obsolete in the fourteenth century, and it was not finally abolished until 1852.[270] In an age of comparative simplicity, it is natural that men should turn rather to the guarantees of individual character, or to the forms of venerable superstition, than to the subtleties of legal procedure. Even as the defendant was expected to produce vouchers of his truthfulness, so might the plaintiff be equally required to give evidence that his repute among his neighbors was such as to justify the belief that he would not bring a false charge or advance an unfounded claim. The two customs appear to arise from the same process of reasoning and to be identical in spirit, leading to a contest between the two parties as to which could bring forward the largest and most credible number of conjurators, and the position of the accused being outsworn was a recognized circumstance in jurisprudence. Thus, the Council of Tribur in 895 provides that in such case he must either confess or undergo the ordeal.[271] In process of time accusatorial conjurators became commonly used in many places. In Béarn the laws of the thirteenth century provide that in cases of debt under forty sous, where there was no testimony on either side, the claimant could substantiate his case by bringing forward one conjurator, while the defendant could rebut it with two.[272] A similar rule obtained in England in all actions arising from contracts and sales;[273] and in the laws of Soest in Westphalia, compiled at the end of the eleventh or the commencement of the twelfth century, an accusation of homicide could be proved by six conjurators swearing with the prosecutor, while if this failed the accused could then clear himself with eleven compurgators.[274]