and closing their beavers, they fixed their lances in rest, and the trumpeter sounded the charge. The Earl of Hereford began his career with great violence; but before he could join his antagonist, the king threw down his warder, and the heralds inter posed, and by the advice and authority of his parliamentary commissioners, he stopped the combat and ordered both the combat ants to leave the kingdom." Could Richard have seen that this ill-timed interference was ultimately to result in the loss of bis life and crown, he would certainly have urged on the fight to the bitter end, — a result which would probably have rewarded the French count, who came all the way from his native land to see — a farce. Although the trial seems to have fallen into " innocuous desuetude " early in the seventeenth century, it was never abolished by statute. So, in 1818, in the reign of George III., we find a defendant taking ad vantage of the existence of the old law. In that case, Ashford v. Thornton, 1 B. & Aid. 405, an appeal of felony, the appellee, we read, " pleaded as follows: 'not guilty, and I am ready to defend the same by my body.' And thereupon taking his glove off, he threw it upon the floor of the court." Such a pro ceeding seems more in accord with the spirit of the middle ages than with the civiliza tion of the nineteenth century. However, the Court of the King's Bench was equal to the emergency. Lord Ellenborough, the
Chief-Justice, delivered his opinion as fol lows : " The general law of the land is in favor of the wager of battel, and it is our duty to pronounce the law as it is and not as we may wish it to be. Whatever preju dices therefore may justly exist against this mode of trial, still, as it is the law of the land, the court must pronounce judgment for it." The counsel for the appellant, after this opinion, stated that he prayed for no further judgment, and the prosecution was stopped. Here was an excellent opportunity for a revival of the old practice; but Parliament, fearing a rapid extension of the old method of trial by battel, stepped in and by the Act of 59 Geo. III. c. 46, abolished it forever. After a sleep of several hundred years, the old law had been revived in England only to receive its death-blow at the hands of advancing civilization. It is said that quite recently in Pennsyl vania a ruling was given in favor of the plaintiff, sustaining some obsolete techni cality. Thereupon the defendant, being a firm believer in consistency, claimed that if mediaeval practices were to be enforced at all they should be enforced in toto, and ac cordingly he demanded trial by battel. As the defendant was a diminutive Dutch tailor, the point was not pressed, however, and the Pennsylvania court was relieved from what might have been a painful predicament. Of other attempts to revive this old procedure, I know not.
