This power of punishment, as it were for contempt, assumed in respect of those who molested members of the Commons by legal process, was still more naturally applicable to offences against established order committed by any of themselves. In the earliest record that is extant of their daily proceedings, the Commons' Journal of the first parliament of Edward VI., we find, on 21st January 1547-8, a short entry of an order that John Storie, one of the burgesses, shall be committed to the custody of the serjeant. The order is repeated the next day; on the next, articles of accusation are read against Storie. It is ordered on the following day that he shall be committed prisoner to the Tower. His wife soon after presents a petition, which is ordered to be delivered to the Protector. On the 20th of February, letters from Storie in the Tower are read. These probably were not deemed satisfactory, for it is not till the 2nd of March that we have an entry of a letter from Mr. Storie in the Tower with his submission. And an order immediately follows, that "the king's privy council in the nether house shall humbly declare unto the lord protector's grace, that the resolution of the house is, that Mr. Storie be enlarged and at liberty, out of prison; and to require the king's majesty to forgive him his offences in this case towards his majesty and his council." Storie was a zealous enemy of the reformation, and suffered death for treason under Elizabeth. His temper appears to have been ungovernable; even in Mary's reign he fell a second time under the censure of the house for disrespect to the speaker. It is highly probable that his offence in the present instance was some ebullition of virulence against the changes in religion; for the first entry concerning him immediately follows the third reading of the bill that established the English liturgy. It is also manifest that he had to atone for language disrespectful to the Protector's government, as well as to the house. But it is worthy of notice, that the Commons by their single authority commit their burgess first to their own officer, and next to the Tower; and that upon his submission they inform the Protector of their resolution to discharge him out of custody, recommending him to forgiveness as to his offence against the council, which, as they must have been aware, the privilege of parliament as to words spoken within its walls (if we are right in supposing such to have been the case) would extend to cover. It would be very unreasonable to conclude that this is the first instance of a member's commitment by order of the house, the earlier journals not being in existence. Nothing indicates that the course taken was unprecedented. Yet on the other hand we can as little infer that it rested on any previous usage; and the times were just such, in which a new precedent was likely to be established. The right of the house indeed to punish its own members for indecent abuse