If he were found, after a certain length
of time, during which his arms were bandaged, to have been injured, he was
held to have been guilty. If he had escaped unhurt he was innocent.
Gradually, however, the ordeal began to fall into ridicule. William Rufus
gibed at it, for of fifty men sent to the ordeal of iron, under the sacred
charge of the clerks, all escaped, which certainly, as Mr. Maitland
intimates, looks as if the officiating ecclesiastics had an interest in
the result. [Footnote: _History of English Law_, II, 599, note 2.] At
length, by the Lateran Council of 1215, the Church put an end to the
institution, but long afterward it found its upholders. For example, the
_Mirror_, written in the reign of Edward I (circa 1285) complained, "It is
an abuse that proofs and compurgations be not by the miracle of God where
other proof faileth." Nor was the principle that "attempts" to commit
indictable offences are crimes, established as law, until at least the
time of the Star Chamber, before its abolition in the seventeenth century.
Though doubtless it is the law to-day. [Footnote: Stephen, _Digest of the
Criminal Law_, 192.] And this, although the means used may have been
impossible. Moreover, the doctrine is still in process of enlargement.
Very convincing conclusions may be drawn from these facts.
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