then, putting the House in mind of the order and resolution of the preceding day, proposed from the committees that a new commission might issue, so as the words in the commission may be thus changed: viz., Instead of, _Ac pro eo quod officium Seneschalli Angliae, (cujus praesentia in hac parte requiritur,) ut accepimus, jam vacat_, may be inserted, _Ac pro eo quod proceres et magnates in Parliamento nostro assemblati nobis humiliter supplicaverunt ut Seneschallum Angliae pro hac vice constituere dignaremur_: to which the House agreed.[88] It must be admitted that precedents drawn from times of ferment and jealousy, as these were, lose much of their weight, since passion and party prejudice generally mingle in the contest; yet let it be remembered, that these are resolutions in which both Houses concurred, and in which the rights of both were thought to be very nearly concerned,--the Commons' right of impeaching with effect, and the whole judicature of the Lords in capital cases. For, if the appointment of an High Steward was admitted to be of absolute necessity, (however necessary it may be for the regularity and solemnity of the proceeding during the trial and until judgment, which I do not dispute,) every impeachment may, for a reason too obvious to be mentioned, be rendered ineffectual, and the judicature of the Lords in all capital cases nugatory. It was from a jealousy of this kind, not at that juncture altogether groundless, and to guard against everything from whence the necessity of an High Steward in the case of an impeachment might be inferred, that the Commons proposed and the Lords readily agreed to the amendment in the Steward's commission which I have already stated. And it hath, I confess, great weight with me, that this amendment, which was at the same time directed in the cases of the five Popish lords, when commissions should pass for their trials, hath taken place in every commission upon impeachments for treason since that time.[89] And I cannot help remarking, that in the case of Lord Lovat, when neither the heat of the times nor the jealousy of parties had any share in the proceeding, the House ordered, "That the commission for appointing a Lord High Steward shall be in the like form as that for the trial of the Lord Viscount Stafford, as entered in the Journal of this House on the 30th of November, 1680: except that the same shall be in the English language."[90]