The principle thus solemnly adjudged was ever afterwards asserted by the managers for the House of Commons in all its latitude, and with an energy, zeal, and earnestness proportioned to the magnitude of the interests involved,--as appeared conspicuously on the impeachment for high treason of the Lords who had taken part in the Rebellion of 1715 to bring back the Stuarts. Lord Wintoun, after conviction, moved in arrest of judgment, and excepted against the impeachment for error, on account of the treason not being described with sufficient certainty,--the day on which the treason was committed not having been alleged. The learned counsel, arguing that Parliamentary Law was part of Common Law, submitted “whether there is not the same certainty required in one method of proceeding at the Common Law as in another.”[175] To this ingenious presentment, by which proceedings in Parliament were brought within the grasp of the Common Law, the able and distinguished managers replied with resolution, asserting the supremacy of Parliamentary Law. Walpole, afterwards the famous Prime Minister, began:-- “Those learned gentlemen seem to forget _in what court they are_. They have taken up so much of your Lordships’ time in quoting of authorities and using arguments to show your Lordships what would quash an indictment in the courts below, that they seem to forget they are now in a court of Parliament and on an impeachment of the Commons of Great Britain.… I hope it will never be allowed here as a reason, that what quashes an indictment in the courts below will make insufficient an impeachment brought by the Commons of Great Britain.”[176] The Attorney-General supported Walpole:-- “I would take notice that we are upon an impeachment, and not upon an indictment. The courts below have set forms to themselves, which have prevailed for a long course of time, and thereby are become the forms by which those courts are to govern themselves; but it never was thought that the forms of those courts had any influence on the proceedings of Parliament.”[177] Cowper, a brother of the Lord Chancellor of that name, said:-- “If the Commons, in preparing articles of impeachment, should govern themselves by precedents of indictments, in my humble opinion they would depart from the ancient, nay, the constant, usage and practice of Parliament.”[178] Sir William Thomson followed:-- “The precedents in impeachments are not so _nice and precise in form_ as in the inferior courts.”[179] The judges, in answer to questions propounded, declared the necessity in indictments of mentioning “a certain day.” But the Lords, in conformity with ancient usage, set aside this technical objection, and announced:-- “That the impeachment is sufficiently certain in point of time, according to the forms of impeachments in Parliament.”[180]