>What a presumption is.<

A presumption is a conjecture of some one thing, gathered upon diverse circumstances.

Presumptions rash and probable.

A rash presumption doth rise upon mere suspicion, and doth not lean upon any part of the thing done. A probable presumption doth lie hid within the matter done, although of itself it doth not take away all doubt, but only doth bring with it a likelihood or credulity that the thing should so be.

A probable presumption being holpen by the affirmation of any one witness, or with any halfful proof, doth make faith and persuadeth. But a rash presumption is wholly to be rejected.

A violent or vehement presumption.

A violent presumption is that doth lean upon so evident [tokens >judgments<] and marks that the same thing, the which is affirmed to be seemeth necessarily to follow thereupon.

The judge shall trim his mind and straighten it to one kind of proof. And therefore in those causes that of their own nature cannot be proved directly, he may /be/ brought unto the same by presumptions to give sentence.

We are t/mught by the example of King Solomon that a judge may give sentence upon /а/ violent presumption, who hearing a cause betwixt two women and discerning betwixt the natural love of the one and the hatred of the other /against the child/, who was the mother, adjudged the same child to the woman that was loth, or rather abhorred, to have her child parted or cut in two (I Kings iii.). Let the judge yet provide that when [241v] he seeth a presumption whereby he is moved to give sentence, that same be put in writing and committed to the acts whereby the foundation of the sentence given may appear.

Probatio carnalis copulae per praesumptiones.

Violenta praesumptione probari carnalem commistionem nullus dubitet, veluti si masculus et femina, solus cum sola, nudus cum nuda, in eodem lecto iacentes depraehensi fuerint.

In probanda commixtione maris et feminae, sufficiat probatio actuum propinquorum ad earn, dum tamen testium accedat credulitas.

Uxor cui maritus non abs re denuntiabit, ne cum eo, quem suspectum habuerit, colloqueretur, secretove consortio uteretur, si mariti denuntiationem spernat, adultera censeatur.