Less creditable means were sometimes employed, and men did not hesitate, with the unreasoning inconsistency characteristic of superstition, to appeal to God and at the same time endeavor to influence God’s judgment by the use of unlawful expedients. This was not confined to the laity. In 1355 there was an important suit between the Bishop of Salisbury and the Earl of Salisbury respecting the ownership of a castle, in which the combat was adjudged. When the champions entered the lists the customary examination of their arms and accoutrements was made, and the combat was adjourned in consequence, as it was said, of finding in the coat of the episcopal champion certain rolls containing prayers and charms. The case was finally compromised by the bishop paying fifteen hundred marks to the earl for the disputed property.[387] That precautions against such devices were deemed necessary is shown by the oath required of all combatants, whether principals or champions, that they had on them no charms or conjurations to affect the result.[388] A quaint formula for this is the oath of the champion in the case of Low _vs._ Paramore in 1571—“This hear you justices that I have this day neither eat, drunk, nor have upon me either bone, stone, ne glass or any enchantment, sorcery, or witchcraft where-through the power of the Word of God might be inleased or diminished and the devil’s power increased, and that my appeal is true, so help me God and his saints and by this Book.”[389]
The right of demanding the wager of battle between principals varied much with the age and race, though as a “bilateral” ordeal, as a rule, from the earliest times either party was entitled to claim it.[390] When Beaumanoir composed his _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, in 1283, the practice may be considered to have entered upon its decadence; twenty years had elapsed since the determined efforts of St. Louis to abolish it; substitutes for it in legal processes had been provided; and the manner in which that enlightened jurist manifests his preference for peaceful forms of law shows that he fully appreciated the civilizing spirit in which the monarch had endeavored to soften the ferocity of his subjects. When, therefore, we see in Beaumanoir’s treatise how few restrictions existed in his time, we may comprehend the previous universality of the custom. In criminal cases, if an accuser offered battle, the defendant was forced either to accept it or to confess his guilt, unless he could prove an alibi, or unless the accuser was himself notoriously guilty of the crime in question, and the accusation was evidently a mere device to shift the guilt to the shoulders of another; or unless, in case of murder, the victim had disculpated him, when dying, and had named the real criminals.[391] If, on the other hand, the accused demanded to wage his battle, the judge could only refuse it when his guilt was too notorious for question.[392] A serf could not challenge a freeman, nor a bastard a man of legitimate birth (though an appeal of battle might lie between two bastards), nor a leper a sound man.[393] In civil actions, the battle trial was not allowed in cases relating to dower, to orphans under age,[394] to guardianships, or to the equity of redemption afforded by the feudal laws to kinsmen in the sale of heritable property, or where the matter at stake was of less value than twelve deniers.[395] St. Louis also prohibited the duel between brothers in civil cases, while permitting it in criminal accusations.[396] The slenderness of these restrictions shows what ample opportunities were afforded to belligerent pleaders.[397]