It might perhaps be well questioned, notwithstanding the considerable opinion of Sir M. Hale, whether the statutes directed against the prosecution of civil and criminal suits before the council are so worded as to exclude the original jurisdiction of the House of Lords, though their principle is very adverse to it. But it is remarkable that, so far as the Lords themselves could allege from the rolls of parliament, one only instance occurs between 4 Hen. IV. (1403) and 43 Eliz. (1602) where their house had entered upon any petition in the nature of an original suit; though in that (1 Ed. IV. 1461) they had certainly taken on them to determine a question cognisable in the common courts of justice. For a distinction seems to have been generally made between cases where relief might be had in the courts below, as to which it is contended by Sir M. Hale that the Lords could not have jurisdiction, and those where the injured party was without remedy, either through defect of the law, or such excessive power of the aggressor as could defy the ordinary process. During the latter part at least of this long interval, the council and court of star-chamber were in all their vigour, to which the intermission of parliamentary judicature may in a great measure be ascribed. It was owing also to the longer intervals between parliaments from the time of Henry VI., extending sometimes to five or six years, which rendered the redress of private wrongs by their means inconvenient and uncertain. In 1621 and 1624, the Lords, grown bold by the general disposition in favour of parliamentary rights, made orders without hesitation on private petitions of an original nature. They continued to exercise this jurisdiction in the first parliaments of Charles I.; and in one instance, that of a riot at Banbury, even assumed the power of punishing a misdemeanour unconnected with privilege. In the long parliament, it may be supposed that they did not abandon this encroachment, as it seems to have been, on the royal authority, extending their orders both to the punishment of misdemeanours and to the awarding of damages.[31]