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Updated: May 10, 2025
We have made up our minds; and we now purpose to do him, by the blessing of God, full and signal justice. It is to be observed that the appellant in this case does not come into court alone. He is attended to the bar of public opinion by two compurgators who occupy highly honourable stations.
"Let all share the same lot," ran its law; "if any misdo, let all bear it." A member could look for aid from his gild-brothers in atoning for guilt incurred by mishap. He could call on them for assistance in case of violence or wrong. If falsely accused they appeared in court as his compurgators, if poor they supported, and when dead they buried him.
But experience having shown that this method of trial was tumultuary and uncertain, they corrected it by the idea of compurgation. The party concerned was no longer put to his oath, he simply pleaded; the compurgators swore as before in ancient times; therefore the jury were strictly from the neighborhood, and were supposed to have a personal knowledge of the man and the fact.
These compurgators were at first to be three; afterwards five were required; in process of time twelve became necessary. As a man might be charged by the opinion of the country, so he might also be discharged by it: twelve men were necessary to find him guilty, twelve might have acquitted him.
If a man for want of friends, or for want of good reputation, were unable to procure compurgators to attend him at visitations or courts, held sometimes twenty miles and more away, he might be condemned as guilty of specific acts which he had never committed. He might even fail in his proof because he was poor.
Certainly not. Yet it was as clearly inconsistent with the common law, or the English constitution, to disfranchise those whose freeholds fell below any arbitrary standard fixed by the government, as it would have been to disfranchise all whose freeholds rose above that standard. Lingard says: "These compurgators or jurors were sometimes drawn by lot." 1 Lingard's History of England, p. 300.
Hospitable, liberal, and beneficent to the poor; and an easy mistress over numerous ceorls, while the vulgar dreaded, they would yet have defended her. Proofs of her art it would have been hard to establish; hosts of compurgators to attest her innocence would have sprung up.
I let fly a broadside at them, in a single sheet of paper, under the title of "A Fresh Pursuit"; in which, having restated the controversy between them and us, and reinforced our charge of forgery, &c., against Thomas Hicks and his abettors, I offered a fair challenge to them, not only to Thomas Hicks himself, but to all those his compurgators who had before undertaken to acquit him from our charge, together with their companion Jeremy Ives, to give me a fair and public meeting, in which I would make good our charge against him as principal, and all the rest of them as accessories.
The oath ex officio was forced on Johnson, but he denied all guilt. Finally, he was enjoined to procure three compurgators. These swore that they believed "in animis suis" that Johnson had sworn to the truth.
I may have the most absolute faith that a friend has not committed the crime of which he is accused. In the early days of English history, if my friend could have obtained a few more compurgators of a like robust faith, he would have been acquitted.
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