Queer Culprits
and killed a child. It was executed in the square, dressed in man's clothes. The execution cost six sous, six deniers, and a new pair of gloves for the executioner, that he might come out of the job with clean hands.
1389. A horse tried at Dijon, on information given by the magistrates of Montbar, and condemned to death, for having killed a man.
1499. A bull was condemned to death at Cauroy, near Beauvais, for having in a fury "occis" a little boy of fourteen or fifteen years old.
A farmer of Moisy let a mad bull escape. The brute met and gored a man so severely that he only survived a few hours. Charles, Count de Valois, having heard of the accident whilst at his chateau of Crépy, ordered the bull to be seized and committed for trial. This was accordingly done. The officers of the Count de Valois gathered all requisite information, received the affidavits of witnesses, established the guilt of the bull, condemned it to be hanged, and executed it on the gibbet of Moisy-le-Temple. The death of the beast thus expiated that of the man. But matters did not stop here. An appeal against the sentence of the Count's officers was lodged before the Candlemas parliament of 1314—drawn up in the name of the Procureur de l'Hôpital at Moisy, declaring the officers to have been incompetent judges, having no jurisdiction within the confines of Moisy, and as having attempted to establish a precedent. The parliament received and investigated the appeal, and decided that the condemnation of the bull was perfectly just, but found that the Count
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