No rank of life in fact procured exemption from the duel between antagonists of equal station. When in 1002, on the death of Otho III., the German throne was filled by the election of Henry the Lame, Duke of Bavaria, one of his disappointed competitors, Hermann, Duke of Suabia, is said to have demanded that their respective claims should be determined by a judicial combat, and the new king, feeling himself bound to accept the wager of battle, proceeded to the appointed place, and waited in vain for the appearance of his antagonist.[372] Thus the champion of England, who until 1821 figured in the coronation pageant of Westminster Abbey, was a relic of the times when it was not an idle ceremony for the armed and mounted knight to fling the gauntlet and proclaim aloud that he was ready to do battle with any one who challenged the right of the new monarch to his crown.[373] A striking example of the liability attaching to even the most exalted rank is afforded by a declaration of the privileges of the Duchy of Austria, granted by Frederic Barbarossa in 1156, and confirmed by Frederic II. in 1245. These privileges rendered the dukes virtually independent sovereigns, and among them is enumerated the right of employing a champion to represent the reigning duke when summoned to the judicial duel.[374] Even more instructive is the inference deducible from the For de Morlaas, granted to his subjects by Gaston IV. of Béarn about the year 1100. The privileges contained in it are guaranteed by a clause providing that, should they be infringed by the prince, the injured subject shall substantiate his complaint by his simple oath, and shall not be compelled to prove the illegality of the sovereign’s acts by the judicial combat, thus indicating a pre-existing custom of the duel between the prince and his vassals.[375] It is not to be supposed, however, from these instances that the duel was an aristocratic institution, reserved for nobles and affairs of state. It was an integral part of the ordinary law, both civil and criminal, employed habitually for the decision of the most every-day affairs. Thus a chronicler happens to mention that in 1017 the Emperor St. Henry II. coming to Merseburg hanged a number of robbers who had been convicted in single combat by champions, and then proceeding to Magdeburg he had all the thieves assembled and treated them in the same manner.[376] So much was it a matter of course, that, by the English law of the thirteenth century, a pleader was sometimes allowed to alter the record of his preliminary plea, by producing a man who would offer to prove with his body that the record was incorrect, the sole excuse for the absurdity being that it was only allowed in matters which could not injure the other side;[377] and a malefactor turning king’s evidence was obliged, before receiving his pardon, to pledge himself to convict all his accomplices, if required, by the duel.[378]