Nor does your Committee
find that any demurrer or exception, as of false or erroneous pleading,
hath been ever admitted to any impeachment in Parliament, as not coming
within the form of the pleading; and although a reservation or protest
is made by the defendant (matter of form, as we conceive) "to the
generality, uncertainty, and insufficiency of the articles of
impeachment," yet no objections have in fact been ever made in any part
of the record; and when verbally they have been made, (until this
trial,) they have constantly been overruled.
The trial of Lord Strafford[4] is one of the most important eras in the
history of Parliamentary judicature. In that trial, and in the
dispositions made preparatory to it, the process on impeachments was, on
great consideration, research, and selection of precedents, brought very
nearly to the form which it retains at this day; and great and important
parts of Parliamentary Law were then laid down. The Commons at that time
made new charges or amended the old as they saw occasion. Upon an
application from the Commons to the Lords, that the examinations taken
by their Lordships, at their request, might be delivered to them, for
the purpose of a more exact specification of the charge they had made,
on delivering the message of the Commons, Mr.
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