This appeareth by the
commission itself. It reciteth, that the Earl of Derwentwater and
others, _coram nobis in praesenti Parliamento_, had been impeached by the
Commons for high treason, and had, _coram nobis in praesenti
Parliamento_, pleaded guilty to that impeachment; and that the King,
intending that the said Earl of Derwentwater and others, _de et pro
proditione unde ipsi ut praefertur impetit', accusat', et convict'
existunt coram nobis in praesenti Parliamento, secundum legem et
consuetudinem hujus regni nostri Magnae Britanniae, audientur,
sententientur, et adjudicentur_, constituteth the then Lord Chancellor
High Steward (_hac vice_) to do and execute all things which to the
office of High Steward in that behalf do belong. The receiving and
recording the confession of the prisoners, which amounted to a
conviction, so that nothing remained but proceeding to judgment, was
certainly an exercise of judicial authority, which no assembly, how
great soever, not having full cognizance of the cause, could exercise.
In the case of Lord Salisbury, who had been impeached by the Commons for
high treason, the Lords, upon his petition, allowed him the benefit of
the act of general pardon passed in the second year of William and Mary,
so far as to discharge him from his imprisonment, upon a construction
they put upon that act, no High Steward ever having been appointed in
that case.
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