Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
Nearly ten years ago I ventured to lay before you some speculations upon the origin of impeachment, and to suggest that the classical view of its nature was not a sure guide to its historical origins. In its developed form it could be reasonably described as a trial by the lords of a person whom the commons had indicted (or nearly so) of high crimes and misdemeanours. Thus linked up with the age-old criminal procedure of the common law, the parliamentary impeachment could cast a decent veil of legality over the political realities which too often disgraced it, and could pose before the world in the reassuring robes of justice.
page 153 note 1 Trans. R. Hist. Soc., 4th ser., xxiv. 47–71.
page 154 note 1 The statutes mentioned by Clarke, M. V., Fourteenth Century Studies (1937), p. 246Google Scholar, do not agree, and do not always succeed in giving an exhaustive list of lawful procedures; the expression ‘due process’ in some of them may be an attempt to meet this deficiency by using a general term to cover those omitted.
page 154 note 2 Constitutional History (1875), ii. 430Google Scholar.
page 154 note 3 History of Criminal Law, i. 148.
page 154 note 4 History of English Law (1922), i. 380Google Scholar.
page 154 note 5 Fourteenth Century Studies, p. 242.
page 154 note 6 History of Pleas of the Crown, ii. 150.
page 155 note 1 Studies in Constitutional History, p. 82.
page 155 note 2 Chapters in Administrative History, iii. 286 ff.
page 155 note 3 Richard II, pp. 23 ff.
page 155 note 4 Chronicon Angliae (R.S. no. 64), pp. 68 ff., 391 ff.
page 155 note 5 Edited by V. H. Galbraith (19,27).
page 155 note 6 Rotuli Parliamentorum, ii. 321 (1–8).
page 155 note 7 Ibid., ii. 322 (9). This must not be taken as evidence that supply preceded redress.
page 155 note 8 Ibid., ii. 322 (io)–323 (14).
page 155 note 9 Ibid., ii. 323 (15)–330 (47).
page 155 note 10 Ibid., ii. 331 (52)–360 (212).
page 156 note 1 One would like to have seen that book; there is no statute on the subject, although the commons did petition in 1373 for the staple to be at Calais—to which the king gave an evasive reply: Rot. Pad., ii. 318 (17). See ProfessorGalbraith's, note in Anonimalle Chronicle, p. 183Google Scholar.
page 156 note 2 Ibid. p. 88.
page 156 note 3 Ibid., p. 89.
page 157 note 1 Ibid., p. 90.
page 157 note 2 Ibid., pp. 90–1.
page 157 note 3 Rot. Parl., ii. 322–3.
page 157 note 4 Baldwin, J. F., The King's Council, p. 120Google Scholar.
page 158 note 1 Anonimnalle Chronicle, p. 93.
page 159 note 1 As early as Glanvill, xiv. 1, a traitor could be taken, although there were no certain accuser; his trial would then be-by inquisition and ordeal.
page 160 note 1 In his defence, Rot. Parl., ii. 326a, Larimer answers that ‘bill’, but makes no allusion to any other. There seems no room, therefore, for the supposition that [written] petitions had become a [written] indictment. The impeachment as a whole was not embodied in a document; if it had been, the parliament roll would certainly have taken the easy course of reproducing it, instead of compiling a narrative of the lengthy proceedings.
page 160 note 2 There is an excellent history of ‘accroaching’ in Clarke, , Fourteenth Century Studies, p. 247Google Scholar. On the continent the idea was as old as 1066: Kern, F., Kingship and Law (tr. Chrimes, S. B.), p. 93Google Scholar.
page 161 note 1 Trans. R. Hist. Soc., 4th sen, xxiv. 65–7.
page 163 note 1 The same situation arose in Nevill's case when a witness in parliament did not maintain what he had previously said the day before to some of the commons; he was committed to prison.
