It will be readily admitted that few objects of archæological research are better deserving of our attention than those which illustrate the jurisprudential system of our ancestors, and the history of our venerable laws.
A most extraordinary feature of the judicial code of ancient times was the practice of the Ordeal Trials, in which the solemnities of religion were united with the administration of secular justice, and a mode of divination resorted to for the discovery of hidden truth; and since those modes of trial were for many ages a part of English law and usage in the trial of criminal causes, though now (perhaps happily) they are matter of history alone, the author proposes in the present discourse to put together as concisely as he can the information and examples he has collected in elucidation of the origin and practice of the Ordeal Trials, and to invite references to any judicial records which may further illustrate the subject.