the object causing the death, and that was to be forfeited sa
deodand "pro rege." It was to be given to God, that is to say to
the Church, for the king, to be expended for the good of his
soul. A man's death had ceased to be the private affair of his
friends as in the time of the barbarian folk-laws. The king, who
furnished the court, now sued for the penalty. He supplanted the
family in the claim on the guilty thing, and the Church
supplanted him.

In Edward the First's time some of the cases remind of the
barbarian laws at their rudest stage. If a man fell from a tree,
the tree was deodand. /2/ If he drowned in a [25] well, the well
was to be filled up. /1/ It did not matter that the forfeited
instrument belonged to an innocent person. "Where a man killeth
another with the sword of John at Stile, the sword shall be
forfeit as deodand, and yet no default is in the owner." /2/ That
is from a book written in the reign of Henry VIII., about 1530.
And it has been repeated from Queen Elizabeth's time /3/ to
within one hundred years, /4/ that if my horse strikes a man, and
afterwards I sell my horse, and after that the man dies, the
horse shall be forfeited. Hence it is, that, in all indictments
for homicide, until very lately it has been necessary to state
the instrument causing the death and its value, as that the
stroke was given by a certain penknife, value sixpence, so as to
secure the forfeiture. It is said that a steam-engine has been
forfeited in this way.

I now come to what I regard as the most remarkable transformation
of this principle, and one which is a most important factor in
our law as it is today. I must for the moment leave the common