Note 809 — Chapter VIII · DECLINE OF THE JUDICIAL COMBAT.

Maitland’s Select Pleas of the Crown, I. 92. See Neilson, p. 154, for an account of a savage combat in 1456 with an approver who had already caused the hanging of several innocent men. In this case the judge laid down the law that if the approver was vanquished the defendant must be hanged for homicide. This strange ruling is not in accordance with earlier practice. In 1220 an approver accuses seven persons, but is defeated in the first combat and hanged, whereupon the accused are discharged on bail (Maitland, Select Pleas, I. 123). See two other cases in the same year (Ibid. p. 133).