Divining in some sort his spoiler, the aggrieved and plundered sought legal redress. Now the Laws of the Marches, agreed on by royal commissioners from the two kingdoms, regulated intercourse from early times. Thus as early as 1249, eleven knights of Northumberland, and as many from the Scots Border, drew up a rough code: for the recovery of debts, the surrender of fugitive bondsmen, and the trial by combat of weightier matters in dispute. All Scotsmen, save the king and the bishops of St. Andrews and Dunkeld, accused of having committed a crime in England, must fight their accuser at certain fixed places on the Marches; and there were corresponding provisions when the accused was an Englishman. What seems a form of the _judicium Dei_ appears in another provision. An animal said to be stolen, being brought to the Tweed or the Esk, where either formed the boundary, was driven into the water. If the beast sank the defendant paid. If it swam to the farther shore, the claimant had him as his own. If it scrambled back to the bank whence it started, the accused might (perchance) retain it with a clear conscience. But as to this event the record is silent; and, indeed, the whole business lacks intelligibility. The combats, however, were many, and were much denounced by the clergy, who had to provide a champion, and were heavily mulcted if he lost. The priest suffered no more than the people; but he could better voice his wrongs. All such things were obviously adaptations of the trial by ordeal, or by combat, and the treason duel of chivalry, to the rough life of the Border. Again, the matter was settled, even in late times, by the oath of the accused. The prisoner was sworn:--“By Heaven above you, Hell beneath you, by your part of Paradise, by all that God made in six days and seven nights, and by God Himself,” that he was innocent. In a superstitious age this might have some effect; and there was ever the fear of being branded as perjured. But it can have been used only when there was no proof, or when the doubt was very grave: when the issue, that is, seemed as the cutting of a knot, the loosing whereof passed man’s wit.