It was decided by the House of Commons, with the consent of Pitt, that Hastings should be impeached. One indignity Pitt spared him, one danger Pitt saved him from. Burke was, somewhat incomprehensibly, anxious that the name of Francis should be placed upon that Committee of Impeachment to which Burke had already been nominated as the first member by Pitt. But here Pitt was resolute. Francis was flagrantly hostile to Hastings, hostile with a personal as well as a public hatred, and Pitt could not tolerate the notion that he should find a place upon the Committee of Impeachment. Burke protested, and the {281} very protest was characteristic of Burke's high-mindedness. For to Burke the whole business was a purely public business, in no sense connected with any private feelings, and it seemed to him as if the exclusion of any one of those who had been conspicuous in the arraignment of Hastings from a responsible place on the Committee of Impeachment on the ground of personal feeling was to cast something like a slur upon the purity of motive of the men engaged in the attack. But Pitt was in the right, and the name of Francis was, by a large majority, not suffered to appear upon the committee. [Sidenote: 1787--The impeachment trial] In the May of 1787 Burke formally impeached Warren Hastings at the Bar of the House of Lords. Hastings was immediately taken into custody by the Sergeant-at-Arms, and was held to bail for 20,000 pounds, with two sureties for 10,000 pounds each. The delay which was to be characteristic of the whole proceedings was evident from the first. Though Hastings was taken into custody in the May of 1787, It was not until February 13 of the following year, 1788, that the impeached man was brought to his trial in Westminster Hall.