feud was bought off. The gradual encroachment of the composition
may be traced in the Anglo-Saxon laws, /1/ and the feud was
pretty well broken up, though not extinguished, by the time of
William the Conqueror. The killings and house-burnings of an
earlier day became the appeals of mayhem and arson. The appeals
de pace et plagis and of mayhem became, or rather were in
substance, the action of trespass which is still familiar to
lawyers. /2/ But as the compensation recovered in the appeal was
the alternative of vengeance, we might expect to find its scope
limited to the scope of vengeance. Vengeance imports a feeling of
blame, and an opinion, however distorted by passion, that a wrong
has been done. It can hardly go very far beyond the case of a
harm intentionally inflicted: even a dog distinguishes between
being stumbled over and being kicked.

Whether for this cause or another, the early English appeals for
personal violence seem to have been confined to intentional
wrongs. Glanvill /3/ mentions melees, blows, and wounds,--all
forms of intentional violence. In the fuller description of such
appeals given by Bracton /4/ it is made quite clear that they
were based on intentional assaults. The appeal de pace et plagis
laid an intentional assault, described the nature of the arms
used, and the length and depth of the wound. The appellor also
had [4] to show that he immediately raised the hue and cry. So
when Bracton speaks of the lesser offences, which were not sued
by way of appeal, he instances only intentional wrongs, such as
blows with the fist, flogging, wounding, insults, and so forth.
/1/ The cause of action in the cases of trespass reported in the
earlier Year Books and in the Abbreviatio Plaeitorum is always an
intentional wrong. It was only at a later day, and after