52 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. ment, sworn with all due form before the body of freemen who constituted the popular court, that ended the question. In order to show the purely formal character of this sort of proof in the period of the Frankish kings, even where counter-witnesses were allowed, Brunner refers to a capitulary of Louis le Debonnaire, of the year 819. It is added in a note. It will be observed that while he who suspects that witnesses produced against him are false may bring forward counter-witnesses, yet if the two sets differ hopelessly, the only solution of the difficulty that offers is to have witnesses from each side fight it out together. 1 An English illustration of the old trial by witnesses of the date of 1220-1, and bearing marks of antiquity then, is found in the Liber Albus, 2 where, before Hubert de Burgh and his associate justices, the citizens of London answer as to the way in which certain rents may be recovered in London, viz., by writ of " Gaverlet," in which, if the tenants deny the servitium, the claimant shall name sectam suam, scilicet duos testes, who are to be enrolled and produced at the next hustings. " And if on this day he produce the witnesses and it is shown by them tit de visit suo et auditu, . . . the complainant shall recover his land in demesne." This is also incorporated in the " Statute of ' Gave- let,'" of 10 Edward II. (1316). But even earlier than this, here, as also in Normandy, 3 the old mere party proof by witnesses had, in the main, gone by. Things indicate the breaking up and confusing of older forms; anomalies and mixed methods present themselves. The separate notions of the complaint secta, the fellow swearers, the business witnesses, the community witnesses, and the jurors of the inquisition and the assize run together. It is very interesting to find that, as the 1 "Si quis cum altero de qualibet causa contentionem habuerit, et testes contra eum per judicium producti fuerint, si ille falsos eos esse suspicatur, liceat ei alios testes, quos meliores potuerit, contra eos opponere, ut veracium testimonio falsorum testium per- versitas superetur. Quod si ambae partes testium ita inter se dissenserint, ut nulla tenus una pars alteri cedere velit, eligantur duo ex ipsis, id est, ex utraque parte unus, qui cum scutis et fustibus in campo decertent utra pars falsitatem, utra veritatem suo testi- monio sequatur. Et campioni qui victus fuerit, propter perjurium quod ante pugnam commisit, dextera manus amputetur. Caeteri vero ejusdem partis testes, quia falsi apparuerint, manus suas redimant ; cujus compositionis duae partes ei contra quem testati sunt dentur, tertia pro fredo solvatur. — (Capitulare Primum Ludovici Pii, A. D. 819. — Baluze, Capitularia Regum Francorum, I. 601.) 2 Mun. Gild. Lond. i. 62. 8 Brunner, Schw. 189.
