Note 45 — Chapter IV · Trial by Battle.
Reading edition
Lea, “Superstition and Force,” (4 ed.) 120.
Thayer states that the earliest reference to the trial by battle in English adjudicated cases, is that of Bishop Wulfstan vs. Abbot Walter, in the year 1077. (Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, 379; Bigelow’s Placita Anglo-Normanica, 19; Brunner, Schw. 197, 400-1; Thayer’s Older Modes of Trial, V. Harvard Law Review, 66; II. Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, 397.)
The history of cases of trial by battle that were preserved, in England, prior to Glanville’s time, are to be found in Bigelow’s Placita Anglo-Normanica.