Water-ordeal
Black's Law Dictionary · Henry Campbell Black, M.A. · 1910
Black's Law Dictionary
In Saxon and old English law. The ordeal or trial by water. The hot-water ordeal was performed by plunging the bare arm up to the elbow in boiling water, and escaping unhurt thereby.
4 Bl. Comm. 343.
The cold-water ordeal was performed by casting the person suspected into a river or pond of cold water, when, if he floated therein, without any action of swimming it was deemed an evidence of his guilt: but, if he sunk, he was acquitted.
Id.