Note 85 — Chapter VII · Wager of Law.
Reading edition
8 Wheaton, 675; 21 L. Ed. 713.
Compurgation was allowed in a charge of usury, by statute in Massachusetts, in 1783. (St. Mass. 1783, c. 55.) But in Little vs. Rogers, (1 Met. 108) Shaw, C. J., observes that the trial by jury has been “substituted for the old trial by oath.”
Mr. Lea, in his excellent work, “Superstition and Force” (3 ed.) mentions the fact that in South Carolina, an act of the Legislature of 1712 mentions specific English laws as still in force and enumerates the law of compurgation, or wager of law, and that in Maryland, as late as 1811, Chancellor Kilty mentions the fact that wager of law has gone into disuse, because contrary to our spirit of law, but does not contend that it had then been specifically abolished, in Maryland. (Cooper’s Stat. at L. of So. Car. Columbia, 1837, II., 403; Kilty’s Report on English Statutes, Annapolis, 1811, p. 140; Lea, “Superstition and Force,” p. 81.)