bill containing
articles against him to the lords, with a request that they would pray
the king's majesty to enact that bill in parliament, and that the said
duke might be proceeded against upon the said articles in parliament
according to the law and custom of England. These articles contained
charges of high treason, chiefly relating to his conduct in France,
which, whether treasonable or not, seems to have been grossly against
the honour and advantage of the crown. At a later day the commons
presented many other articles of misdemeanor. To the former he made a
defence, in presence of the king as well as the lords both spiritual and
temporal; and indeed the articles of impeachment were directly addressed
to the king, which gave him a reasonable pretext to interfere in the
judgment. But from apprehension, as it is said, that Suffolk could not
escape conviction upon at least some part of these charges, Henry
anticipated with no slight irregularity the course of legal trial, and,
summoning the peers into a private chamber, informed the duke of
Suffolk, by mouth of his chancellor, that, inasmuch as he had not put
himself upon his peerage, but submitted wholly to the royal pleasure,
the king, acquitting him of the first articles containing matter of
treason, by his own advice and not that of the lords, nor by way of
judgment, not being in a place where judgment could be delivered,
banished him for five years from his dominions. The lords then present
besought the king to let their protest appear on record, that neither
they nor their posterity might lose their rights of peerage by this
precedent. It was justly considered as an arbitrary stretch of
prerogative, in order to defeat the privileges of parliament and screen
a favourite minister from punishment. But the course of proceeding by
bill of attainder, instead of regular impeachment, was not judiciously
chosen by the commons.[232]

[Sidenote: Privilege of parliament.]

7. Privilege of parliament, an extensive and singular branch of our
constitutional law, begins to attract attention under the Lancastrian
princes. It is true indeed that we can trace long before by records, and
may infer with probability as to times whose records have not survived,
one considerable immunity--a freedom from arrest for persons transacting
the king's business in his national council.[233] Several authorities
may be found in Mr. Hatsell's Precedents; of which one, in the 9th of
Edward II.,