charge of the clerks, all escaped, which certainly, as Mr. Maitland
intimates, looks as if the officiating ecclesiastics had an interest in
the result. [Footnote: _History of English Law_, II, 599, note 2.] At
length, by the Lateran Council of 1215, the Church put an end to the
institution, but long afterward it found its upholders. For example, the
_Mirror_, written in the reign of Edward I (circa 1285) complained, "It is
an abuse that proofs and compurgations be not by the miracle of God where
other proof faileth." Nor was the principle that "attempts" to commit
indictable offences are crimes, established as law, until at least the
time of the Star Chamber, before its abolition in the seventeenth century.
Though doubtless it is the law to-day. [Footnote: Stephen, _Digest of the
Criminal Law_, 192.] And this, although the means used may have been
impossible. Moreover, the doctrine is still in process of enlargement.

Very convincing conclusions may be drawn from these facts. The subject is
obscure and difficult, but if the inception of the process of breaking
down the right of enforcing the blood feud be fixed provisionally toward
the middle of the tenth century,--and this date is early enough,--the
movement of thought cannot be said to have attained anything like ultimate
results before at least the year 1321 when a case is cited wherein a man
was held guilty because he had attempted to kill his master, and the
"_volunias in isto casu reputabitur pro facto_."

Measuring by this standard five hundred years is a short enough period to
estimate the time necessary for a community to pass from the stage when
the blood feud is recognized as unquestioned law, to the status involved
in the administration of the cities of refuge, for in these cities not
only the mental condition is provided for as a legitimate defence, but the
defence of negligence is made admissible in a secular court.