....
The law of ancient Rome, though admitting their testimony in general,
refused it in certain cases. The civil canon laws of mediaeval Europe
seem to have carried the exclusion much further. 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. Before
administering the oath, Lord Eskgrove, the judge (to whom this function
belongs in Scotland), gave her this exposition of her duty:

"Young woman, you will now consider yourself as in the presence of
Almighty God and of this High Court. Lift up your veil, throw off all
your modesty, and look me in the face."

Whatever difference does exist in character between the testimony of
men and women has its root in the generally recognized diversity in the
mental processes of the two sexes. Men, it is commonly declared, rely
upon their powers of reason; women upon their intuition. Not that the
former is frequently any more accurate than the latter. But our courts
of law (at least those in English-speaking countries) are devised and
organized