This is too
obvious and too common to need argument or illustration. The proceeding
in Lord Stafford's case never has, now for an hundred and fourteen
years, either in the warm controversies of parties, or in the cool
disquisitions of lawyers or historians, been questioned. The perjury of
the witnesses has been more doubted at some periods than the regularity
of the process has been at any period. The learned lawyer who led for
the Commons in that impeachment (Serjeant Maynard) had, near forty years
before, taken a forward part in the great cause of the impeachment of
Lord Strafford, and was, perhaps, of all men then in England, the most
conversant in the law and usage of Parliament. Jones was one of the
ablest lawyers of his age. His colleagues were eminent men.
In the trial of Lord Strafford, (which has attracted the attention of
history more than any other, on account of the importance of the cause
itself, the skill and learning of the prosecutors, and the eminent
abilities of the prisoner,) after the prosecutors for the Commons had
gone through their evidence on the articles, after the prisoner had also
made his defence, either upon each severally, or upon each body of
articles as they had been collected into one, and the Managers had in
the same manner replied, when, previous to the general concluding reply
of the prosecutors, the time of the general summing up (or recollection,
as it was called) of the whole evidence on the part of Lord Strafford
arrived, the Managers produced new evidence.
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