The employment of compurgators under the Visigothic system was an important and popular one. Their number is not stated, and does not appear to have been limited, but originally it consisted of twelve. The probable predecessor of our system of trial by jury, this institution was derived from the Saxons, and was, without question, of remote antiquity. The oath, under other systems of jurisprudence, rarely employed in purgation of crime, was frequently resorted to by the Visigothic magistracy, as it formerly had been under the primitive legal procedure of the Germans. An accused party, if he had hitherto borne a good character, was entitled to establish his innocence by this means; a proceeding which could be confirmed and accompanied by the affidavits of his friends, neighbors, and kinsmen, who, being persons best acquainted with his character and habits, came into court, and swore to their belief in his innocence. No testimony was offered in their presence, and no arguments were made before them, as with the modern jury. With more correct notions of the requisites and effect of legal evidence than their German predecessors, the Visigothic courts did not admit the intervention of compurgators, except under circumstances where competent proof had failed to conclusively establish the guilt of the accused. It is a curious fact that their services were enlisted by criminals and litigants in the courts of England until comparatively recent times. At first limited to criminal prosecutions, their introduction was subsequently extended to various civil actions, and especially to those brought for the recovery of debts; and, recognized by the Canon Law, compurgators were sworn in England as late as the reign of Elizabeth. This remarkable institution, which bears so plainly the impress of ecclesiastical influence, appealing to the piety and superstitious fears of the ignorant, evinces, by the surprising vitality which it exhibited, its peculiar adaptation to the purposes of legal procedure in the age when it prevailed. While members of the sacerdotal order were, to a certain extent, subject to secular justice under the Visigothic polity, the reverence with which they were universally regarded, the great power they exerted over the institutions of the kingdom, and their superior intelligence, which with the ignorant of all classes, invested them with mysterious powers, rendered their appearance in courts of law most infrequent.