By God And My Country in United States

By God And My Country Definition

In old English criminal practice. The established formula of reply by a prisoner, when arraigned at the bar, to the question, “Culprit, how wilt thou be tried?” Mr. Barrington thinks the correct formula must originally have been, “By God or my country,” i. e., by ordeal (the judicium Dei), or by jury, for the reason that the question asked supposes an option in the prisoner, and the answer is meant to assert his innocence by declining neither sort of trial. Barr. Obs. St. 84 note (i). But it is clear that, in answering the question, the prisoner was expected to select one particular mode of trial, which the alternative expression contended for would not amount to. That the expression “By God” did not necessarily and exclusively import the ordeal appears from the form of issue in cases of trial by the grand assize, which always was that the party put himself “on God and on the grand assize.” See Britt. c. 48; Y. B. T. 20 Hen. VI. 4. That every word of this formula was deemed essential appears from several cases on record, in which the prisoner’s replies, “By God and my good country,” “By God and honest men,” were severally rejected, and he was compelled to us