This ethical degradation was reflected in the low state of the laws, if the changeable wills or whims of a host of petty lords can be dignified with the title of legislation. Power claimed possession with little regard for the method of acquisition. Disputes, when relegated to the pretence of a court, were tried not by weighing evidence, but by counting the number of compurgators, that is, of those persons who would swear that they believed the oath of one or the other party. When the contestants were gentlemen or of the noble order, the cases were arbitrated on the field of Private Combat. Even the judge or referee of the combat was himself liable to challenge from either party that felt itself aggrieved by his decision. Priests, invalids, and women were accustomed to choose some one from among their relatives or friends to champion their cause. There was no appeal to candid judgment after a full hearing of the facts, except in case of dispute between slaves, villains, and freemen of inferior condition, whose owners or lords might be disposed to fair dealing. A relic of the mediæval custom of private combat is the modern duel. The personal encounter often grew to the dimensions of neighborhood war, in which kinsmen and retainers were involved until entire districts were laid waste. Neither the power of Charlemagne nor that of the church prevailed against this unreasonable custom. The one exception to this statement was the temporary lull in the carnage during what was known as the Truce of God, an expedient agreed upon in certain places, according to which raids and riots were confined to the half of the week succeeding the Sabbath. But the adoption of this merciful rule forces our attention to its necessity, since “man’s inhumanity to man” was destroying entire populations as in a deluge of blood. When for any reason the combat was inexpedient the question of right was decided by the Ordeal. The accused party presumed to walk through fire or on burning ploughshares, to handle hot iron, float upon water, plunge the bare arm into a boiling caldron, or swallow a bit of consecrated bread with appeal to Heaven to strike one dead if guilty. If one endured the Ordeal unscathed he was said to be acquitted by the judgment of God. It is not necessary to explain the apparent impunity with which some of the worst criminals passed these trials, nor to cite the multitude of cases in which persons of otherwise undoubted innocence were adjudged guilty because they perished in this irrelevant attempt to vindicate themselves. The fact that questions involving the most sacred rights of the individual, such as the holding of property, the protection of the body from mutilation on the rack, the retaining of life, and the vindication of character, were not so much as brought to the court of intelligence and conscience argues the degradation of both these faculties.