In the feudal times either the prosecutor or the prisoner, in cases of felony, had a right to claim that the cause should be decided by "wager of battle;" but it was an ordeal which, with one exception in the reign of George II., had not been mentioned for centuries.

In 1817, however, the relatives of a woman who had been murdered, being dissatisfied with the acquittal of a man who had been indicted as her murderer, sued out "an appeal of murder" against him, on which he claimed to have the appeal decided by "wager of battle," and threw down a glove on the floor of the court to make good his challenge.
The claim was protested against by the prosecutor; but Lord Ellenborough, the Chief-justice, pronounced judgment that, "trial by battle having been demanded, it was the legal and constitutional mode of trial, and must be awarded.

It was the duty of the judges to pronounce the law as it was, and not as they might wish it to be."[188] He gave sentence accordingly; and, had the two parties been of equal stature and strength, the Judges of the Common Pleas might have been seen, in their robes, presiding from sunrise till sunset over a combat to be fought, as the law prescribed, with stout staves and leathern shields, till one should cry "Craven," and yield up the field.

Fortunately for them, the alleged murderer was so superior in bodily strength to his adversary, that the latter declined the contest.

But the public advancement of the claim for such a mode of decision was fatal to any subsequent exercise of it; and, in spite of the Common Council of London, who, confiding, perhaps, in the formidable appearance presented by some of the City Champions on Lord Mayor's Day, petitioned Parliament to preserve it, the next year the Attorney-general brought in a bill to abolish it, and the judges were no longer compelled to pronounce an absurd sentence in obedience to an obsolete law, framed at a time when personal prowess was a virtue to cover a multitude of sins, and might was the only right generally acknowledged.
The foundation, too, was laid for other reforms.