scharpe at the smalle ende as hit myght be made." Then they must fight fasting. And indeed, as Gregory says, it is too shameful to rehearse all the conditions of this foul conflict. But, most singular of all, was the judge's law, when he told the defendant that if in the duel he slew that " peler, he was to be hanged fop manslaying, " by soo moche that he hathe i-slayne the kyngys prover! " Nor should the slain man have Christian burial; he should be cast out as one that wilfully slew himself. James Fisher, the accused, the " meke in nocent," as Gregory sympathizingly calls him, did not shrink from battle even on these hard terms, and the day was fixed. " Hange uppe Thome Whythorne," said the people; for he was too strong to fight with James Fisher, the true man, with an iron ram's horn. But although the judge had pity, the battle must needs be fought. Duly apparelled in sheepskin and armed with their formidable staves, appellant and appealed entered the place of battle near Winchester, — the " peler " entering from the east side, the other from the southwest. Full sore weeping, as the touching account of Gregory records the duel, the defendant entered with his weapon and a pair of beads in his hand, and he kneeled down upon the earth toward the east, and cried, " God marcy and alle the worlde," and prayed every man's forgiveness, "and every man there beyng present prayde for hym." Then the approver cried out, " Thou fals trayter, why arte thou soo longe? " The de fendant rose, and with the words that his
quarrel was faithful and true, and that in it he would fight, he smote at the " peler," but broke his own weapon with the blow. One stroke only was the approver allowed to make at the defendant; then the officers took his weapon away too. A long time they fought with their fists and rested, and fought again and rested again, and then in Gregory's ex pressive phrase, " they wente togedyr by the neckys." With their teeth they tore each other like dragons of the prime. Soon their leathern coats and the flesh beneath were all " torente," and the end seemed to have arrived when " the fals peler caste that meke inno cent downe to the grownde." But in the wrestle, more by hap than strength, " that innocent recoveryd up on his kneys, and take that fals peler by the nose with hys tethe, and put hys thombe in hys yee, that the peler cryde owte and prayde hym of marcy, for he was fals unto God and unto hym." So the duel ended, and the judge pro nounced sentence upon the approver, whose fate Gregory piously recorded thus: "And thenn he was confessyd ande hanggyd, of whos soule God have marcy. Amen." The victor was set free, but the memories of that terrible hour seem to have darkened his life. He became a hermit, and erelong he died. Gregory's moving story, with its warm sympathy for the accused and its hearty detestation of the accuser, is a good index to public feeling on the subject at the time. The prayers of the people were not with the approver.
