Mascardus says: 'Feminis plerumque omnino non creditur, et id dumtaxat, quod sunt feminae qua ut plurimum solent esse fraudulentre fallaces, et dolosae' [Generally speaking, no credence at all is given to women, and for this reason, because they are women, who are usually deceitful, untruthful, and treacherous in the very highest degree.] And Lancelottus, in his 'Institutiones Juris Canonici,' lays it down in the most distinct terms, that women cannot in general be witnesses, citing the language of Virgil: 'Varium et mutabile semper femina'....
"Bruneau, although a contemporary of Madame de Sevigne, did not scruple to write, in 1686, that the deposition of three women was only equal to that of two men.

At Berne, so late as 1821, in the Canton of Vaud, so late as 1824, the testimony of two women was required to counterbalance that of one man....

A virgin was entitled to greater credit than a widow....

In the 'Canonical Institutions of Devotus,' published at Paris in 1852, it is distinctly stated that, except in a few peculiar instances, women are not competent witnesses in criminal cases.

In Scotland also, until the beginning of the eighteenth century, sex was a cause of exclusion from the witness-box in the great majority of instances." Cockburn in his Memoirs tells of an incident during the trial of Glengarry, in Scotland, for murder in a duel, which is, perhaps, explicable by this extraordinary attitude: A lady of great beauty was called as a witness and came into court heavily veiled.