wilfrid prest blies or estates of commoners and noblemen. It originally formed part of the king’s great council, from which English monarchs dispensed justice to all their subjects. But as the commoners (knights of the shire, and those representing corporate towns or boroughs) began to sit on their own in St Stephen’s Chapel during the fourteenth century, their (lower) chamber or house of parliament, the House of Commons, abandoned any claim to judicial authority, except over its own composition, with respect to disputed elections and similar matters. By contrast the House of Lords still exercised an original criminal jurisdiction over its own members, the peers of the realm (a relatively small cadre when compared to most of their aristocratic European counterparts), and in protection of their various distinctive (but again, comparatively limited and non-fiscal) privileges, as also over any person impeached (that is, indicted) of a high crime or misdemeanour by the House of Commons. In addition, the House of Lords acted quasi-judicially when hearing legal counsel speak for and against the passage of private bills, that sub-species of parliamentary legislation which dealt with limited personal or family matters, rather than applying across the entire realm. None of these were appellate functions, and although the Lords’ common-law jurisdiction in error had been explicitly endorsed by parliamentary legislation in 1585, it was very little used.10 Nor did the Lords conduct any trials following upon an impeachment between the mid-fifteenth century and the 1620s. But in 1621 JamesVIof Scotland, now King JamesI of England called his third parliament. Its two sessions saw both revival of the long-disused procedure of impeachment, to try and convict at the bar of the House of Lords no less a judicial figure than Lord Chancellor Sir Francis Bacon, and the beginnings of an entirely novel judicial role for the Lords. This latter followed upon the king’s referral to the Upper House of a petition from the Yorkshire courtier-entrepreneur Sir John Bourchier, complaining about his treatment in Chancery by Bacon’s successor, Lord Keeper Williams.11 The House eventually rejected Bourchier’s claim that his case 10 Beven, Thomas 1901 p. 162. 11 http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/bourchier-sirjohn-15678-1626 (last accessed on 27 May 2017) 181
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=