England
alone. Such an income was then more than sufficient for the support of
the government in time of peace. [316]

The Lords had, in the meantime, discussed several important questions.
The Tory party had always been strong among the peers. It included the
whole bench of Bishops, and had been reinforced during the four
years which had elapsed since the last dissolution, by several fresh
creations. Of the new nobles, the most conspicuous were the Lord
Treasurer Rochester, the Lord Keeper Guildford, the Lord Chief Justice
Jeffreys, the Lord Godolphin, and the Lord Churchill, who, after his
return from Versailles, had been made a Baron of England.

The peers early took into consideration the case of four members of
their body who had been impeached in the late reign, but had never been
brought to trial, and had, after a long confinement, been admitted to
bail by the Court of King's Bench. Three of the noblemen who were thus
under recognisances were Roman Catholics. The fourth was a Protestant
of great note and influence, the Earl of Danby. Since he had fallen from
power and had been accused of treason by the Commons, four Parliaments
had been dissolved; but he had been neither acquitted nor condemned.
In 1679 the Lords had considered, with reference to his situation,
the question whether an impeachment was or was not terminated by a
dissolution. They had resolved, after long debate and full examination
of precedents, that the impeachment was still pending. That resolution
they now rescinded. A few Whig nobles protested against this step, but
to little purpose. The Commons silently acquiesced in the decision of
the Upper House. Danby again took his seat among his peers, and became
an active and powerful member of the Tory party. [317]

The constitutional question on which the Lords thus, in the short space
of six years, pronounced two diametrically opposite decisions, slept
during more than a century, and was at length revived by the dissolution
which took place during the long trial of Warren Hastings. It was
then necessary to determine whether the rule laid down in 1679, or the
opposite rule laid down in 1685, was to be accounted the law of the
land. The point was long debated in both houses; and the best legal and
parliamentary abilities which an age preeminently fertile both in
legal and in parliamentary ability could supply were employed in the
discussion. The lawyers were not unequally divided. Thurlow, Kenyon,