exposed to no bodily punishment.[343] The villein, however, was not entitled to the privilege, except by special charter.[344] While the feudal system was supreme, this appeal to arms was the only mode of reversing a judgment, and an appeal in any other form was an innovation introduced by the extension of the royal jurisdiction under St. Louis, who labored so strenuously and so effectually to modify the barbarism of feudal institutions by subordinating them to the principles of the Roman jurisprudence. De Fontaines, indeed, states that he himself conducted the first case ever known in Vermandois of an appeal without battle.[345] At the same time the progress of more rational ideas is manifested by his admission that the combat was not necessary to reverse a judgment manifestly repugnant to the law, and that, on the other hand, the law was not to be set aside by the duel. Twenty years later, we find in Beaumanoir abundant evidence of the success of St. Louis in setting bounds to the abuses which he was endeavoring to remove. The restrictions which he enumerates are greatly more efficacious than those alluded to by de Fontaines. In capital cases, the appeal did not lie; while in civil actions, the suzerain before whom the appeal was made could refuse it when the justice of the verdict was self-evident. Some caution, moreover, was requisite in conducting such cases, for the disappointed pleader who did not manage matters rightly might find himself pledged to a combat, single handed, with all his judges at once; and as the bench consisted of a collection of the neighboring gentry, the result might be the confirmation of the sentence in a manner more emphatic than agreeable. An important change is likewise observable in the severe penalty imposed upon a judge vanquished in such an appeal, being a heavy fine and deprivation of his functions in civil cases, while in criminal ones it was death and confiscation—“il pert le cors et quanques il a.”[346] The king’s court, however, was an exception to the general rule. No appeals could be taken from its judgments, for there was no tribunal before which they could be carried.[347] The judges of the royal court were therefore safe from the necessity of vindicating their decisions in the field, and they even carried this immunity with them and communicated it to those with whom they might be acting. De Fontaines accordingly advises the seigneur justicier who anticipates the appeal of battle in his court to obtain a royal judge to sit with him, and mentions an instance in which Philip (probably Philip Augustus) sent his whole council to sit in the court of the Abbey of Corbie, when an appeal was to be entered.[348]