[793] Le Plat, VII. 75.
[794] Würdinger, Beiträge, pp. 17, 19.
[795] Belitz de Duellis German. p. 15.
[796] For these details I am indebted to Du Boys, Droit Criminel des Peuples Modernes, I. 611-17, 650. See also Patetta, Le Ordalie, p. 161. The Sachsenspiegel was extensively in use in Poland, and under it duels continued to be lawful until its abrogation early in the sixteenth century by Alexander I. (Ib. p. 162).
[797] Statut. Roberti III. cap. iii. The genuineness of this statute has been questioned, but it undoubtedly reflects the practice of the period. For the evidence, see Neilson (Trial by Combat, p. 256), who further notes the identity of these provisions with those of Philippe le Bel’s ordonnance of 1306.
[798] Neilson’s Trial by Combat, p. 292.
[799] Knox’s Hist. of Reformation in Scotland, pp. 322, 446-7.
[800] Neilson’s Trial by Combat, pp. 307, 310.
[801] Neilson’s Trial by Combat, p. 35. See also a very interesting essay on the origin and growth of the jury by Prof. J. B. Thayer in the Harvard Law Review, Jan.-March, 1892.
[802] Maitland’s Select Pleas of the Crown, p. xxiv. Whatever may have been the desire of the royal judges, King John himself was not averse to it, for there is a record of two duels between common malefactors ordered to be fought before the king “quia ea vult videre” (Ib. p. 40).