For, if the appointment of an
High Steward was admitted to be of absolute necessity, (however
necessary it may be for the regularity and solemnity of the proceeding
during the trial and until judgment, which I do not dispute,) every
impeachment may, for a reason too obvious to be mentioned, be rendered
ineffectual, and the judicature of the Lords in all capital cases
nugatory.
It was from a jealousy of this kind, not at that juncture altogether
groundless, and to guard against everything from whence the necessity of
an High Steward in the case of an impeachment might be inferred, that
the Commons proposed and the Lords readily agreed to the amendment in
the Steward's commission which I have already stated. And it hath, I
confess, great weight with me, that this amendment, which was at the
same time directed in the cases of the five Popish lords, when
commissions should pass for their trials, hath taken place in every
commission upon impeachments for treason since that time.[89] And I
cannot help remarking, that in the case of Lord Lovat, when neither the
heat of the times nor the jealousy of parties had any share in the
proceeding, the House ordered, "That the commission for appointing a
Lord High Steward shall be in the like form as that for the trial of the
Lord Viscount Stafford, as entered in the Journal of this House on the
30th of November, 1680: except that the same shall be in the English
language.
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