"It was also decreed there that if a Frenchman summon an Englishman for perjury or murder, theft, homicide, or 'ran'--as the English call evident rape, which cannot be denied--the Englishman shall defend himself as he prefers, either through the ordeal of iron or through wager of battle. But if the Englishman be infirm, he shall find another who will do it for him. If one of them shall be vanquished he shall pay a fine of forty shillings to the King. If an Englishman summon a Frenchman, and be unwilling to prove his charge by judgment or by wager of battle, I will, nevertheless, that the Frenchman purge himself by an informal oath." In subsequent reigns wager of battle was infinitely more common, and great encouragement was given to it by the martial race, whose ideas and habits were imposed on the subject population. The principles were established and the procedure regulated by the "Assises de Jerusalem" (1099), whose ordinances were received and recognized throughout Europe as a code of law and honour. For a general statement of conditions and effects we cannot do better than turn to the pages of the almost impeccable Gibbon. "The trial by battle," he says, "was established in all criminal cases which affected the life, or limb, or honour, of any person; and in all civil transactions of or above the value of one mark of silver. It appears that in criminal cases the combat was the privilege of the accuser, who, except in the charge of treason, avenged his personal injury, or the death of those persons whom he had a right to represent; but wherever, from the nature of the charge, testimony could be obtained, it was necessary for him to produce witnesses of the fact. In civil causes the combat was not allowed as the means of establishing the claim of the demandant; but he was obliged to produce witnesses, who had, or assumed to have, knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the privilege of the defendant, because he charged the witness with an attempt by perjury to take away his right. He came therefore to be in the same position as the appellant in criminal cases. It was not, then, as a mode of proof that the combat was received, nor as making negative evidence (according to the supposition of Montesquieu), but in every case the right to offer battle was founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of an injury; and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle, and with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only allowed to women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty. The consequence of a defeat was death to the person accused, or to the champion, or witness, as well as to the accuser himself; but in civil cases the demandant was punished with infamy and the loss of his suit, while his witness and champion suffered an ignominious death. In many cases it was the option of the judge to award or to refuse the combat; but two are specified in which it was the inevitable result of the