ons to the several
Lords High Stewards who have been appointed on the trials of peers
impeached by the Commons, the proceedings are directed to be had
according to the law and custom of the kingdom, _and the custom of
Parliament_: which words are not to be found in the commissions for
trying upon indictments.

"As every court of justice," says Lord Coke, "hath laws and customs for
its direction, some by the Common Law, some by the Civil and Canon Law,
some by peculiar laws and customs, &c., so the High Court of Parliament
_suis propriis legibus et consuetudinibus subsistit_. It is by the _Lex
et Consuetudo Parliamenti_, that all weighty matters in any Parliament
moved, concerning the peers of the realm, or Commons in Parliament
assembled, ought to be determined, adjudged, and discussed, by the
course of the Parliament, and not by the Civil Law, nor yet by the
common laws of this realm used in more inferior courts." And after
founding himself on this very precedent of the 11th of Richard II., he
adds, _"This is the reason that Judges ought not to give any opinion of
a matter of Parliament, because it is not to be decided by the common
laws, but secundum Legem et Consuetudinem Parliamenti: and so the Judges
in divers Parliaments have confessed!"_[3]

RULE OF PLEADING.

Your Committee do not find that any rules of pleading, as observed in
the inferior courts, have ever obtained in the proceedings of the High
Court of Parliament, in a cause or matter in which the whole procedure
has been within their original jurisdiction. Nor does your Committee
find that any demurrer or exception, as of false or erroneous pleading,
hath been ever admitted to any impeachment in Parliament, as not coming
within the form of the pleading; and although a reservation or protest
is made by the defendant (matter of form, as we conceive) "to the
generality, uncertainty, and insufficiency of the articles of
impeachment," yet no objections have in fact been ever made in any part
of the record; and when verbally they have been made, (until this
trial,) they have constantly been overruled.

The trial of Lord Strafford[4] is one of the most important eras in the
history of Parliamentary judicature. In that trial, and in the
dispositions made preparatory to it, the process on impeachments was, on
great consideration, research, and selection of precedents, brought very
nearly to the form which it retains at this day; and great and important
parts