This proceeding was in 1725. At this time, Benjamin Franklin, the printer-boy, was actually in London. It is difficult to imagine that this precocious character, whose observation in public affairs was as remarkable as in philosophy, should have passed eighteen months in London at this very period without noting this remarkable trial and the manner in which it was conducted. Thus, early in life, he saw that a Chief Justice might preside at an impeachment without being a member of the House of Lords or exercising any of the powers which belong to membership. Besides his eminence as Chief Justice, King was the nephew of the great thinker who has exercised such influence on English and American opinion, John Locke. Shortly after presiding at the impeachment as Chief Justice, he became Chancellor with a peerage. He was followed in his high post by Talbot and Hardwicke, each with a peerage. Jumping the long period of their successful administrations, when the presiding officer was also a member of the upper House, I come to another instance where the position of the presiding officer was peculiarly apparent,--and this, too, when Benjamin Franklin was in London, as agent for Pennsylvania. I refer to Sir Robert Henley, who became Lord Keeper in 1757, without a peerage. The King, George the Second, did not like him, and therefore, while consenting to place him at the head of the law, declined to make him a member of the House over which he was to preside. At last, in 1760, the necessities of the public service constrained his elevation to the peerage, and soon afterward George the Third, who succeeded to the throne without the animosities of his grandfather, created him Chancellor and Earl of Northington. For nearly three years, Henley, while still a commoner, was presiding officer. During this considerable period he was without voice or vote. The historian remarks, that, “if there had been any debates, he was precluded from taking part in them.”[133] In another place he pictures the defenceless condition of the unhappy magistrate with regard to his own decisions in the court below, when heard on appeal:-- “Lord Keeper Henley, till raised to the peerage, used to complain bitterly of being obliged to put the question for the reversal of his own decrees, without being permitted to say a word in support of them.”[134] Lord Eldon, in his Anecdote Book, furnishes another statement of this case:-- “When Sir Robert Henley was Keeper of the Great Seal, and presided in the House of Lords as Lord Keeper, he could not enter into debate as a Chancellor being a peer does; and therefore, when there was an appeal from his judgments in the Court of Chancery, and the law Lords then in the House moved to reverse his judgments, … the Lord Keeper could not state the grounds of his opinions given in judgment, and support his decisions.”[135] And thus for nearly three years this commoner presided.