" Accordingly, on the same day, "_It is
declared and ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament
assembled, that the office of an High Steward, upon trials of peers upon
impeachments, is not necessary to the House of Peers; but that the Lords
may proceed in such trials, if an High Steward be not appointed
according to their humble desire._"[87] On the 13th the Lord President
reported, that the committees of both Houses had met that morning, and
discoursed, in the first place, on the matter of a Lord High Steward,
and had perused former commissions for the office of High Steward; and
then, putting the House in mind of the order and resolution of the
preceding day, proposed from the committees that a new commission might
issue, so as the words in the commission may be thus changed: viz.,
Instead of, _Ac pro eo quod officium Seneschalli Angliae, (cujus
praesentia in hac parte requiritur,) ut accepimus, jam vacat_, may be
inserted, _Ac pro eo quod proceres et magnates in Parliamento nostro
assemblati nobis humiliter supplicaverunt ut Seneschallum Angliae pro hac
vice constituere dignaremur_: to which the House agreed.[88]
It must be admitted that precedents drawn from times of ferment and
jealousy, as these were, lose much of their weight, since passion and
party prejudice generally mingle in the contest; yet let it be
remembered, that these are resolutions in which both Houses concurred,
and in which the rights of both were thought to be very nearly
concerned,--the Commons' right of impeaching with effect, and the whole
judicature of the Lords in capital cases.
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