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

For example, if a horse strike his keeper and kill him; if a man, in driving a cart, fall so that the cart-wheel runs over him and presses him to death; if one be felling a tree, and give warning to the standers by to look to themselves, yet a man is killed by the fall thereof; in the first case, the horse; in the second, the cart-wheel, cart, and horses; and in the third, the tree, is *Deo dandus*, to be given to God, that is, to the king, to be distributed to the poor by his almoner, for expiation of this dreadful event. "Omnia qua movent ad mortem sunt deodanda." This law seems to be in imitation of that promulgated in Exodus, (chap. xxii.), "If an ox gore a man or a woman that they die; then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be quit." Fieta says the deodand is to be sold, and the price distributed to the poor, for the soul of the king, his ancestors, and all faithful people departed this life.