The system, resting on the sanctions of religion and honour, was not suited for general application, and there is no doubt that it was abused. Confining ourselves to University experience, the bad effects of the practice are exposed in a protest entered by Dr. Gascoigne in the Chancellor's Court-book at Oxford, wherein he cautions his successors to exercise the greatest care in admitting people to the privilege, and counsels them to withhold the name of the accuser from the accused. He states that cases have come under his notice in which individuals have not only perjured themselves, but in private have not blushed to acknowledge it; and he shows very plainly the futility of the system by affirming that if a townsman objected to anyone claiming compurgation, he ran a risk of being assaulted, maimed, and even murdered. The date of this entry is 1443. It may be added that the majority of the cases were those of incontinence; and among other charges mention is made of embezzlement and attachment of a new document to an old seal. For details of procedure we may glance at the very full accounts preserved in the records of the City of London, where there were in operation three sorts or forms of compurgation, by which persons appealed, impleaded, and accused might obtain acquittal. The first was termed the Great Law, and had respect to murder and homicide. The second, the Middle Law, regarded the crime of mayhem, or corporal hurt, by which a man lost the use of any member that was or might be any defence to him in battle. The third law applied to insults, batteries, wounds, blows, torts, effusion of blood, and similar injuries inflicted at the season of the Nativity, the week of Pasque, and at Pentecost. An accused person desiring to purge himself by the Great Law was required to observe the following order: He had to make an oath in his own person that he was innocent touching the felony and breach of the King's peace, and the entire crime laid to his charge--"So help me God and these hallows!" (i.e., the Gospels on which he was sworn). After that six men had to swear that, according to their privity and knowledge, he had made a sound oath. Then the accused repeated the oath, and was supported by the sworn testimony of six more witnesses. So it went on until thirty-six sworn men had testified in his favour.