The Melancholy-Looking yuryman.
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judgment of -fire and water is forbidden by their belief in his statement and to his gen eral truthfulness. Trials of this kind, how the Church of Rome." Matthew Paris, enumerating the notable ever, were often fraudulently conducted. Thus, when William Rufus caused forty occurrences of the first half of the thirteenth Englishmen of good quality and fortune to century, alludes to the disuse of the ordeal. be tried by the ordeal of hot iron, they all But it was no easy matter to root out such a escaped unhurt, and were acquitted. Then deep-rooted superstition, instances of which there was the ordeal known as the " cors- were of constant occurrence. Thus, the be ned," or morsel of execration, already alluded lief that the wounds of a murdered person to, which consisted of a piece of bread, weigh would bleed afresh at the approach or touch ing about an ounce, being given to the ac of the murderer long retained its hold on cused person, that, if he were guilty, it might the popular mind; and in a note to the cause convulsions and paleness and find no " Fair Maid of Perth," we are told how this passage, but turn to health and nourishment bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evi if he were innocent. The sudden and fatal dence of guilt in the High Court of Jus appeal to this trial by Godwin, Earl of Kent, ticiary at Edinburgh as late as the year 1668. in the year 1053, when accused of the mur Another of the few ordeals that still linger der of Alfred, the brother of Edward the in popular memory may be seen occasionally Confessor, ranks among the most curious in some country village where persons sus traditions of English history. Hallam relates pected of theft are made to hold a Bible that "a citizen of London suspected of mur hanging to a key, which is supposed to turn der, having failed in the ordeal of cold water, in the hands of the thief, — a survival of the was hanged by order of Henry II., though old classic and mediaeval ordeal described in he had offered five hundred marks to save Hudibras as his life." It would seem that trial by ordeal "The oraclo of Sieve and Shears, That turns as certain as the Spheres." was permitted to persons already convicted by the verdict of a jury. But instances of this kind are mostly con Ordeals were abolished in England about fined to the uncultured part of the com the commencement of Henry III.'s reign. munity; for, happily, ordeals have long since An edict dated Jan. 27, 12 19, directs the had their day, and are now discarded from judges then starting on their circuits to em the laws of the more civilized nations. — ploy other modes of proof, " seeing that the Chambers' Journal.
THE MELANCHOLY-LOOKING JURYMAN. {From " Leaves of a Life" being the Reminiscences of Montagu Williams, Q. C.1) T NUMBERED among my clients one of the shrewdest men I ever met in my life. He was a solicitor in a large criminal practice, who was known, feared, and trusted by all the thieves, burglars, and receivers — especially by the last named — in this great
metropolis. A member of the Jewish com munity, he was an old man of remarkably sharp appearance and of diminutive stature. One Saturday preceding the opening of the sessions of the Central Criminal Court I was sitting in my chambers when a brief was
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