Note 25 — Chapter IV · Trial by Battle.
Reading edition
Neilson’s “Trial by Combat,” pp. 56, 57.
In the class of civil or criminal cases where the right of trial by battle obtained, when the plaintiff offered battle, the defendant was bound to accept the offer. Having offered to defend the charge preferred against him, in legal contemplation, he volunteered to defend it with his own body, or with the body of his freeman, “when and where the court shall consider that defend he ought.” He then tendered his gage and pledges to the court that on the given day set, he would perform the task assigned to him. (Year Book, 21, 22, II. Edw. I., pp. 9, 167; II. Pollock and Maitland’s History English Law, pp. 610, 611.)
The champion, originally, was a witness and it was as such that he intervened. In a plea for land, he testified to having seen the seisin and that either he or his father saw the claimant in the possession of the land. (Neilson’s “Trial by Combat,” p. 48.)
While hired champions were forbidden by the law, it became a very common practice and Neilson gives many such contracts in his interesting and thorough book, on “Trial by Combat,” pp. 48, 54.
Maynard’s Year Books, contain the history of many trials occurring during the reigns of Edward III. and Henry VI. The report of one such trial, in the year 1329, describes the champions as appearing with shaven heads, ungirt coats, bare legged and bare armed, tendering a glove, with a penny in each finger, to the judge, who afterwards offered the pennies on the altar of the nearest church, in order that “God might give the victory to him who was in the right.” (Maynard’s Year Books, I. Henry VI., pp. 6, 7; idem. 21 Henry VI., pp. 19, 20.)
As the pugilists of the present day, have managers, who conduct the combats between the champions for the wager of the ringside, so men of the thirteenth century kept pugilists for hire, whose services were quite generally used in these trials. One of these champions was Richard of Newnham, whose master, or manager, was William of Cookham (Note Book, pl. 185, 400, 551), whose expert services were much in demand about the year 1220.