in our customs, a thing given or forfeited as it were to God, for the pacification of his wrath in a case of misadventure, whereby a Christian soul comes to a violent end, without the fault of any reasonable creature.

As, if a horse strike his keeper and kill him: if a man, in driving a cart, falls so as the cart-wheel runs over him, and presses him to death: if one by felling a tree, and gives warning to the flanders-by to look to themselves, yet a man is killed by the fall thereof: in the first place, the horse; in the second, the cart-wheel, cart, and horses; and in the third, the tree, is *Deo datus*, "to be given to God," that is, to the king, to be distributed to the poor by his almoner, for expiation of This law seems to be an imitation of that in Exodus, chap. xxi. "If an ox gore a man, or a woman, with his horns, so as they die; the ox shall be stoned to death, and his flesh not be eaten; so shall his owner be innocent."

Flota says, the Deodand is to be sold, and the price distributed to the poor, for the soul of the knig, his ancestors, and all faithful people departed this life.