So strangely had this action varied from its first use--which was to recover damages for wrongful possession of land--that in the result these were nominally estimated at a shilling; and if A. really wished to make B. disgorge the spoils of possession, he sued him again for Mesne Profits. Although the action was nominally "_Doe_ against _Roe_," the cases are usually cited as "_Doe on the demise of A._" (the real plaintiff) "against B." (the real defendant), and whilst John and Richard were the favourite styles, we have occasionally "_Good Title_ against _Bad Title_": a comically impudent begging of the question at issue. If the outside public mocked these venerable figures, _par nobile fratrum_, the suitor did so at his peril. A certain Unitt (_temp._ George I.), being served with a copy of a Declaration in Ejectment, "pronounced contemptuous words on the delivery of it," and the judges in solemn conclave held that he was in contempt, and was deserving of punishment therefor. So the masque of shadows went on till 1852, when the Common Law Procedure Act removed an obstacle which lawyers had walked round for centuries, and consigned John Doe and Richard Roe to that limbo where so much legal rubbish lies buried under ever-thickening clouds of dust. SANCTUARY Your old-world lawyer was an ardent, if uncritical, antiquary. He began at the beginning, and where facts ran short his fancy filled up the blank. In discussing Sanctuary he started with the biblical cities of refuge. He had something to say of Romulus and the foundation of Rome. Geoffrey of Monmouth supplied him with the name of a sovereign--Dunwallo Molmutius to wit--who flourished in Druidical Britain (B.C. 500 it was said), under whom cities and even ploughs were arks of refuge for the despairing fugitive. It might have been objected that the ancient Britons had neither ploughs nor cities; but such criticism was not yet in the land. We touch firmer ground in the centuries immediately preceding the Conquest. In early English legislation churches safeguarded the criminal from hasty vengeance, and so allowed time to settle the money compensation payable for his offence. Sanctuary was among the privileges that the Conqueror conferred upon his foundation of Battle Abbey--one of many cases wherefrom the Norman lawyers built up a system for mediæval England.