in law, a person who gives evidence in any cause, and is sworn to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Trial by Witnesses, a species of trial without the intervention of a jury. This is the only method of trial known to the civil law, in which the judge is left to form in his own breast his sentence upon the credit of the witnesses examined; but it is very rarely used in the English law, which prefers the trial by jury before it in almost every instance. Save only that when a widow brings a writ of dower, and the tenant pleads that the husband is not dead; this being looked upon as a dilatory plea, is in favour of the widow, and for greater expedition allowed to be tried by witnesses examined before the judges: and so, faith Finch, shall no other case in our law. But Sir Edward Coke mentions some others; as, to try whether the tenant in a real action was duly summoned, or the validity of a challenge to a juror: so that Finch's observation must be confined to the trial of direct and not collateral issues. And in every case Sir Edward Coke lays it down, that the affirmative must be proved by two witnesses at the least.