was no oppression so cruel as the oppression wrought by the harsh and rigid forms of the courts.  From such calamities the miserable and despairing victims could look for no help save from the miraculous aid of the saints; and society at that time, as indeed it has been known to do in later days, was for ever appealing from the iniquity of law to God,—­to a God who protected murderers if they murdered Jews, and defended robbers if they plundered usurers, who was, indeed, above all law, and was supposed to distribute a violent and arbitrary justice, answering to the vulgar notion of an equity unknown on earth.

We catch a glimpse of a trial of the time in the story of a certain Ailward, whose neighbour had refused to pay a debt which he owed him.  Ailward took the law into his own hands, and broke into the house of his debtor, who had gone to the tavern and had left his door fastened with the lock hanging down outside, and his children playing within.  Ailward carried off as security for his debt the lock, a gimlet, and some tools, and a whetstone which hung from the roof.  As he sauntered home, however, his furious neighbour overtook him, having heard from the children what had been done.  He snatched the whetstone from Ailward’s hand and dealt him a blow on the head with it, stabbed him in the arm with a knife, and then triumphantly carried him to the house which, he had robbed, and there bound him as “an open thief” with the stolen goods upon him.  A crowd gathered round, and an evil fellow, one Fulk, the apparitor, an underling of the sheriff employed to summon criminals to the court, remarked that as a thief could not legally be mutilated unless he had taken to the value of a shilling, it would be well to add a few articles to the list of stolen goods.  Perhaps Ailward had won ill-fame as a creditor, or even, it may be, a money-lender in the village, for his neighbours clearly bore him little goodwill.  The crowd readily consented.  A few odds and ends were gathered—­a bundle of skins, gowns, linen, and an iron tool,—­and were laid by Ailward’s side; and the next day, with the bundle hung about his neck, he was taken before the sheriff and the knights, who were then holding a Shire Court.  The matter was thought doubtful; judgment was delayed, and Ailward was made fast in Bedford jail for a month, till the next county court.  There the luckless man sent for a priest of the neighbourhood, and confessing his sins from his youth up, he was bidden to hope in the prayers of the blessed Virgin and of all the saints against the awful terrors of the law, and received a rod to scourge himself five times daily; while through the gloom shone the glimmer of hope that having been baptized on the vigil of Pentecost, water could not drown him nor fire burn him if he were sent to the ordeal.  At last the month went by and he was again carried to the Shire Court, now at Leighton Buzzard.  In vain he demanded single combat with Fulk, or the ordeal by fire; Fulk, who had been