This right seems to have been asserted by the Managers for the Commons in the case of Lord Stafford, 32 Charles II.[77] The Managers in that case claimed it as the right of the Commons to produce witnesses for the purpose of fortifying their former evidence. Their claim was admitted by the court. It is an adjudged case in the Law of Parliament. Your Committee is well aware that the notorious perjury and infamy of the witnesses in the trial of Lord Stafford has been used to throw a shade of doubt and suspicion on all that was transacted on that occasion. But there is no force in such an objection. Your Committee has no concern in the defence of these witnesses, nor of the Lords who found their verdict on such testimony, nor of the morality of those who produced it. Much may be said to palliate errors on the part of the prosecutors and judges, from the heat of the times, arising from the great interests then agitated. But it is plain there may be perjury in witnesses, or even conspiracy unjustly to prosecute, without the least doubt of the legality and regularity of the proceedings in any part. This is too obvious and too common to need argument or illustration. The proceeding in Lord Stafford's case never has, now for an hundred and fourteen years, either in the warm controversies of parties, or in the cool disquisitions of lawyers or historians, been questioned. The perjury of the witnesses has been more doubted at some periods than the regularity of the process has been at any period. The learned lawyer who led for the Commons in that impeachment (Serjeant Maynard) had, near forty years before, taken a forward part in the great cause of the impeachment of Lord Strafford, and was, perhaps, of all men then in England, the most conversant in the law and usage of Parliament. Jones was one of the ablest lawyers of his age. His colleagues were eminent men.