Chivalry passed, yet not the half-forgotten wager of battle. A claim so to determine a civil dispute was made in 1571, to the great perplexity of the lawyers. Elaborate preparations were made, but the case was settled in other fashion. Under James I. bills were introduced into Parliament to abolish it, but they fell through, and in 1774, at the beginning of the North American troubles, when it was proposed to punish the New Englanders by depriving them of the appeal of murder, Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, described it as that great pillar of the Constitution. Burke concurred, and the motion was lost. Perhaps they have it yet in the States, at least Dr Cooper, in editing, in 1857, the statutes at large of South Carolina, treats Wager of Battle as an existing fact. In England the end came in dramatic fashion. In May 1817 Mary Ashford--a young woman of Langley in Warwickshire, was found drowned under suspicious circumstances. A certain Abram Thornton was suspected of the murder; he was tried and acquitted, but there was much evidence against him, and he had played so ill a part in a horrid though vulgar tragedy that the relatives of the dead girl cast about to carry the matter further. Now, an old act provided that no acquittal by jury should bar an appeal of murder, so William Ashford, Mary's brother, appealed Thornton in the Court of King's Bench. He was attached, and when called upon pleaded "Not guilty, and am ready to defend the same by my body." He then threw down his glove on the floor of the Court. It was a curious turn; for no doubt men thought that he would put himself upon the country, and stand a second trial by jury. There was much legal argument (set forth at great length in the reports of the time), for the prosecuting counsel tried hard to "oust his battle," but to no purpose, and in the end Thornton was set free. In 1819, two years after the drowning of Mary Ashford, the Appeal of Murder Act (59 Geo. III. c. 46) abolished the last remnant of Wager of Battle. THE PRESS-GANG Smollett, Galt, Marryatt, and the other naval novelists, not those well-nigh forgotten Dry-as-dusts whose works encumber the back shelves of our law libraries, are the authorities for the press-gang of popular imagination. The sea-port invaded, the house surrounded at dead of night by man-o'-war's men with stout cudgels, and by naval officers with cutlasses; the able-bodied mariner knocked down _first_ and _then_ bid stand in the king's name; the official shilling thrust into his reluctant palm before he is hauled off in irons--who has not devoured with joy this wild romance, with its tang of the sea, its humour and rough frolic, the daring and exciting prelude to much more daring and more exciting achievements? But how far can we trust these entertaining authors? And what was the legal status of the press-gang?