Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/321

 Ch. 20., it is requiite that the party, whoe deed it is, hould eal, and in mot caes I apprehend houldy ign it alo. The ue of eals, as a mark of authenticity to letters and other intruments in writing, is extremely antient. We read of it among the Jews and Perians in the earliet and mot acred records of hitory. And in the book of Jeremiah there is a very remarkable intance, not only of an attetation by eal, but alo of the other uual formalities attending a Jewih purchae. In the civil law alo, eals were the evidence of truth; and were required, on the part of the witnees at leat, at the attetation of every tetament. But in the times of our Saxon ancetors, they were not much in ue here. For though ir Edward Coke relies on an intance of king Edwyn's making ue of a eal about an hundred years before the conquet, yet it does not follow that this was the uage among the whole nation: and perhaps the charter he mentions may be of doubtful authority, from this very circumtance, of being ealed; ince we are aured by all our antient hitorians, that ealing was not then in common ue. The method of the Saxons was for uch as could write to ubcribe their names, and, whether they could write or not, to affix the ign of the cros: which cutom our illiterate vulgar do, for the mot part, to this day keep up; by igning a cros for their mark, when unable to write their names. And indeed this inability to write, and therefore making a cros in it's tead, is honetly avowed by Caedwalla, a Saxon king, at the end of one of his charters. In like manner, and for the ame unurmountable reaon, the Normans, a brave but Rh