"Whereas before this time the peers of the land have been arrested
and imprisoned, and their temporalities, lands, and teneiments,
goods and cattels, asseized in the king's hands, and some put to
death without judgment of their peers: It is accorded and assented,
that no peer of the land, officer, nor other, because of his office,
nor of things touching his office, nor by other cause, shall be
brought in judgment to lose his temporalities, lands, tenements,
goods and cattels, nor to be arrested, nor imprisoned, outlawed,
exiled, nor forejudged, nor put to answer, nor be judged, but by
award (sentence) of the said peers in Parliament." 15 Edward III.,
st. 1, sec. 2.
Section 4, of the same statute provides,
"That in every Parliament, at the third day of every Parliament.
the king shall take in his hands the offices of all the ministers
aforesaid," (that is, "the chancellor, treasurer, barons, and
chancellor of the exchequer, the justices of the one bench and of
the other, justices assigned in the country, steward and chamberlain
of the king's house, keeper of the privy seal, treasurer of the
wardrobe, controllers, and they that be chief deputed to abide nigh
the king's son, Duke of Cornwall,") "and so they shall abide four
or five days; except the offices of justices of the one place or the
other, justices assigned, barons of exchequer; so always that they
and all other ministers be put to answer to every complaint; and if
default be found in any of the said ministers, by complaint or other
manner, and of that attainted in Parliament, he shall be punished
by judgment of the peers, and put out of his office, and another
convenient put in his place. And upon the same our said sovereign
lord the king shall do (cause) to be pronounced and made execution
without delay, according to the judgment (sentence) of the said peers
in the Parliament."
Here is an admission that the peers were to fix the sentence, or
judgment, and the king promises to make execution "according to"
that sentence.
And this appears to be the law, under which peers of the realm
and the great officers of the crown were tried and sentenced, for
four hundred years after its passage, and, for aught I know, until this
day.
The first case given in Hargrave's collection of English State
Trials, is that of Alexander Nevil, Archbishop of York, Robert
Vere Duke of Ireland; Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, and
Robert Tresilian, Lord Chief Justice of England, with several
others, convicted of treason, before "the Lords of Parliament," in
1388. The sentences in these cases were adjudged by the "Lords
of Parliament," in the following terms, as they are reported.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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