een used aforetime that the justices should
in any wise determine the privileges of the high court of parliament;
for it is so high and mighty in his nature, that it may make law; and
that which is law, it may make no law; and the determination and
knowlege of that privilege belongs to the lords of parliament, and not
to the justices[k]." [Transcriber's Note: missing end quotation mark
added] Privilege of parliament was principally established, in order
to protect it's members not only from being molested by their
fellow-subjects, but also more especially from being oppressed by the
power of the crown. If therefore all the privileges of parliament were
once to be set down and ascertained, and no privilege to be allowed
but what was so defined and determined, it were easy for the executive
power to devise some new case, not within the line of privilege, and
under pretence thereof to harass any refractory member and violate the
freedom of parliament. The dignity and independence of the two houses
are therefore in great measure preserved by keeping their privileges
indefinite. Some however of the more notorious privileges of the
members of either house are, privilege of speech, of person, of their
domestics, and of their lands and goods. As to the first, privilege of
speech, it is declared by the statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. as one of
the liberties of the people, "that the freedom of speech, and debates,
and proceedings in parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned
in any court or place out of parliament." And this freedom of speech
is particularly demanded of the king in person, by the speaker of the
house of commons, at the opening of every new parliament. So likewise
are the other privileges, of person, servants, lands and goods; which
are immunities as antient as Edward the confessor, in whose laws[l] we
find this precept. "_Ad synodos venientibus, sive summoniti sint, sive
per se quid agendum habuerint, sit summa pax_:" and so too, in the old
Gothic constitutions, "_extenditur haec pax et securitas ad
quatuordecim dies, convocato regni senatu_[m]." This includes not only
privilege from illegal violence, but also from legal arrests, and
seisures by process from the courts of law. To assault by violence a
member of either house, or his menial servants, is a high contempt of
parliament, and there punished with the utmost severity. It has
likewise peculiar penalties annexed to it in the courts of law, by the
sta