Closely related to the lot are the appeals to chance, to settle doubtful questions or ascertain guilt. Such was that made by the pious monks of Abingdon, about the middle of the tenth century, to determine their right to the meadows of Beri against the claims of some inhabitants of Oxfordshire. For three days, with fasting and prayer, they implored the Divine Omnipotence to make manifest their right; and then, by mutual assent, they floated on the Thames a round buckler, bearing a handful of wheat, in which was stuck a lighted taper. The sturdy Oxonians gaped at the spectacle from the distant bank, while a deputation of the more prudent monks followed close upon the floating beacon. Down the river it sailed, veering from bank to bank, and pointing out, as with a finger, the various possessions of the Abbey, till at last, on reaching the disputed lands, it miraculously left the current of the stream, and forced itself into a narrow and shallow channel, which in high water made an arm of the river around the meadows in question. At this unanswerable decision, the people with one accord shouted “Jus Abbendoniæ, jus Abbendoniæ!” and so powerful was the impression produced, that the worthy chronicler assures us that thenceforth neither king, nor duke, nor prince dared to lay claim to the lands of Beri, showing conclusively the wisdom of the abbot who preferred thus to rely upon his right rather than on mouldy charters or dilatory pleadings.[1130]
A more prosaic form of the ordeal of chance is the trial by Bible and key which is of old Teutonic origin.[1131] It is still in common use in England, where it may even yet “be met with in many an out-of-the-way-farm-house.” In cases of theft a key is secured at Psalm 50, 18: “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers;”[1132] and the mode in which it is expected to reveal guilt is manifested in a case recorded in the London Times as occurring at Southampton in 1867, where a sailor boy on board a collier was brought before court on a charge of theft, the only evidence against him being that afforded by securing a key in a Bible opposite the first chapter of Ruth. The Bible was then swung round while the names of several suspected persons were repeated, and on the mention of the prisoner’s name the book fell on the floor. A somewhat different method is recounted in a case reported by the journals in 1879, where a woman in Ludlow, who had lost a sheet, perambulated the streets of the town with a Bible and key, and brought a prosecution against a person whose guilt she had thus discovered. It was explained in court that the key was placed at Ruth I. 16, the investigator holding his fingers crossed, and when the thief was named the key would spontaneously move. In this case the prosecutrix declared that when she came to the defendant’s house “the Bible turned completely round and fell out of her hands.” A variant of this, described in two MSS. of the twelfth century, consisted in placing a piece of wood over the verse of the Psalm, “Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is true;” the book was then securely bound so that the head of the wood protruded, and it was suspended, while a priest uttered an adjuration and the accused was questioned, the result being apparently determined by the motion or rest of the book. Still another form consisted of suspending a small loaf of bread which had been placed behind the altar during mass and at its conclusion blessed and marked with a cross by the priest. At the trial he uttered a conjuration, when if the bread turned the accused was held guilty.[1133]
Closely akin to the Bible and key is the sieve-driving or sieve-turning by which criminals were detected by the tilting or falling of a sieve when, in repeating the names of those suspected, that of the culprit was mentioned. The sieve required to be an heirloom in the family; it was balanced on the point of a pair of scissors, or was laid upon a pair of tongs, or the point of a pair of scissors was driven into the rim and it was suspended by the ring to the middle finger of the right hand. This was of ancient origin and was extensively practised in France and Germany even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1134] The existence of the same belief in England is shown in 1554, when William Haselwood, on being cited before the ecclesiastical court of the diocese of London, said that having lost his purse “remembering that he being a chylde dyd hear his mother declare that when any man had lost anything, then they wolde use a syve and a payre of sheers to bring to knowledge who hadd the thing lost; and so he did take a seve and a payre of sheeres and hanged the seve by the pointe of the sheeres and sayd these words: By Peter and Paule he hath yt, namying the party whom he in that behalf suspected.”[1135] Evidently at this time the Church regarded the process as sorcery.
[CHAPTER XI.]
BIER-RIGHT.
The belief that at the approach of the murderer the corpse of the slain would bleed or give some other sign has, under the names of jus feretri, jus cruentationis, bahr-recht, and “bier-right,” been a resource eagerly seized by puzzled jurists. Its source is not easily traced. There is no evidence of its existence among the Eastern Aryans, nor is it alluded to in any of the primitive “Leges Barbarorum,” though Russian legends render probable that it was current among the Slavs at an early day.[1136] Enthusiastic explorers into antiquity quote Aristotle for it,[1137] while others find in Lucretius evidence that it was shared by cultured Romans.[1138] Possibly its origin may be derived from a Jewish custom under which pardon was asked of a corpse for any offences committed against the living man, the offender laying hold of the great toe of the body as prepared for sepulture, and it is said to be not uncommon, where the injury has been grievous, for the latter to respond to the touch by a copious nasal hemorrhage.[1139]
The earliest allusion I have met with to this belief occurs in 1189, and shows that already it was rooted in popular credulity. It is the well-known story that when Richard Cœur de Lion hastened to the funeral of his father, Henry II., and met the procession at Fontevraud, the blood poured from the nostrils of the dead king, whose end he had hastened by his rebellion and disobedience.[1140] Although it never seems to have formed part of English jurisprudence, its vitality in the popular mind is shown in Shakespeare’s Richard III., where Gloster interrupts the obsequies of Henry VI. and Lady Anne exclaims:—
“O gentlemen,see, see! dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh!”