court. Some four thousand spectators oc cupied the seats, — women and children under fourteen were excluded. The cham pions were then brought from their tents, the one for defendant, who had prayed for Wager of Battle, having priority. Each was attired in a coat of armor reaching from shoulder to knee. He was bare-headed, bare-armed and bare-legged below the knee; on his feet w-ere red sandals. Each cham pion was preceded by a drummer and trum peter, and each was attended by two yeomen, one of whom carried his leather shield and the other his staff or club an ell long. Be fore Naylor was also borne, on the point of a sword, the gauntlet of challenge which he had taken up. Proclamation was made enjoining strict silence on the spectators. Each champion in turn knelt before the judges and made obeisance. Then he went to the centre of the lists and did the same. They then again knelt before the judges, who ordered Naylor to stand on the left side of their bench, and Thorne on the right side. Each took his shield and club and went to his station. The further procedure was ordained as follows : — The champions should again come before the judges, and, after shaking hands, each should take oath upon the Bible. For the defendant, that the land in dispute did not belong to the plaintiff. For the plaintiff, that it did. Each champion then should swear as follows; " Hear ye this oath, Jus tices. I have this day neither ate, drank, nor have I upon me bone, stone nor any enchant ment, sorcery, or witchcraft, whereby the law of God may be abased or the law of the Evil One exalted." The fight once begun, must continue till the stars appeared in the eve ning. If defendant's champion could hold out till then his principal would be victor, because he had maintained his possession of the land. If he was killed, knocked insen
sible, or uttered the word " craven," which was equivalent to a confession of perjury, he was beaten, and judgment was given against his principal, and the " craven " was there after incapacitated from being juror or wit ness in any cause. Alas for the judges, learned sergeants and the four thousand spectators, who had jour neyed to Tuthill Fields in the expectation of seeing a fight, the principal parties had privately settled the matter, and, on being called — their presence being necessary to authorize the combat — they did not appear, and so the assembly departed without learn ing whether Naylor or Thorne was the "better man." From that time the plea of Wager of Battle seems to have been unused in Eng land until in 1817 it was revived in a start ling way. On May twenty-sixth in that year, a pretty g:rl named Mary Ashford went to a dance at a village inn in Warwickshire. She there met a farmer's son named Abra ham Thornton, with whom she danced sev eral times. At a late hour she left the inn to go to her grandfather's house. Thornton acted as her escort. Next morning her body was found in a pool of water, and there was proof that she had been outraged and then murdered. Thornton was tried for the crime, and the circumstantial evi dence was very strong against him, but he succeeded in proving an alibi, and was ac quitted. Nevertheless, the public feeling against him was very bitter, and Mary's brother William resorted to an unusual and almost obsolete legal remedy, called the "appeal of murder," which was a relic of an old system of procedure wherein after an acquittal on a charge of murder a new trial could be demanded by an heir or blood re lation of the murdered person. Such an appeal was in direct violation of the funda mental rule of the English law, that no one
