This prevalence of the wager of battle among the Irish Celts renders probable its existence likewise among the early inhabitants of Britain. If so, the long domination of the Romans was doubtless sufficient to extinguish all traces of it. The Welsh laws attributed to Hoel Dda in the early part of the tenth century, which are exceedingly minute and precise in their directions as to all forms of legal procedure, make no allusion to it whatever. It is true that an ancient collection of laws asserts that the code of Dyvnwal-moel-mud, a British king, prescribed the ordeals of battle, of hot iron, and of boiling water, and that Hoel in his legislation considered them unjust, abrogated them, and substituted the proof by men, or _raith_.[300] This legend, however, is very apocryphal. There is no allusion to such customs in the Welsh codes up to the close of the twelfth century, and the few indications which occur in subsequent collections would seem to indicate that these were rather innovations due to the influence of the English conquest than revivals of ancient institutions. Among the Slavs, as they emerge into history, the duel occupies a controlling position in the administration of justice. Ibn Dost, an Arab traveller in Russia in the tenth century, relates that a pleader dissatisfied with the judgment of the king could always appeal to the sword, and this decision was regarded as so absolute that the defeated party, his family and possessions were all at the disposition of the victor. In Bohemia at a later period the successful combatant was required to decapitate his antagonist.[301] The earliest records of the various other Slavic lands give evidence of the prevalence of the judicial combat, showing that it formed part of their ancestral customs prior to their occupation of their present territories.[302]