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.

Hence the ridiculous practice of obliging men to bring compurgators, who, as they did not pretend to know any thing of the fact, expressed upon oath, that they believed the person spoke true; and these compurgators were in some cases multiplied to the number of three hundred [u].