the House, a vote which was followed by another protest, signed by twenty-one Peers (No. xli), in which the right of protestation is emphatically affirmed. It is probable that further action would have been taken on this occasion, had not the Peers been fully occupied with the case of Fagg and Sherley, and their quarrel with the Commons. Parliament was prorogued on the 9th of June, ostensibly because this quarrel was a total hindrance to public business.

Parliament met again on the 3rd of October, and, as is well known, the Houses recommenced their quarrel over the case of Sherley and Fagg. On the 4th of November Lord Anglesey inserted a protest denying the right of the Lords to entertain the case at all, on the ground, among others, that the Lords have no original jurisdiction (No. xlvi). This action of Lord Anglesey revived the question originally raised six years before, and the manner of protestation' was debated at length on the 11th of November. The debate was adjourned to the 15th of November, and then again adjourned to the 18th, the Clerk of Parliaments being ordered to have the Journals in readiness, and the Clerk of Records in the Tower to attend with such rolls as bear on the matter for the examining of precedents mentioned in the said debate, or such others as shall then be offered to this House.' On the 18th of November the debate was adjourned to the 22nd, when Parliament was prorogued. The question was then dropped and was never revived.

I have been unable to discover any report of this debate, or any notes taken of the arguments alleged on either side. The fact of the debate is mentioned in the celebrated Letter from a person of quality to a friend in the country,' which publication is variously assigned to Shaftesbury and Locke. This authority informs us that the defence of the practice was undertaken by Lord Holles; and we learn from the same source that the practice of protesting was checked by referring Bills-in this particular case the Oaths Bill to a Committee of the whole House, because the liberty of protesting against the votes of such a Committee was not allowed.

I have dwelt on these facts at length, because they suggest that the majority looked with considerable jealousy on the

right assumed by the minority, and were disposed to adopt some expedient by which the exercise of the right might be brought under restraint. The expedient was discovered in the practice of expunging reasons, the vote of the House by which all the proceedings in Strafford's trial were obliterated from the Journals being the precedent for such obliterations. But I feel convinced that if the House had discovered from their records that the right which they claimed was really as ancient and undoubted as they had begun to assert it to be, they would have called attention to a course of ancient and cumulative precedents in defence of the privilege. Now such evidence was not forthcoming; the practice was a generation old, and no more, and had been adopted in the first instance by that section of the Long Parliament which acted in unison with those members of the Commons who took Pym as their Parliamentary leader. It might have been inconvenient to avow the origin of the practice; it would have been the abandonment of a privilege to have retreated from the practice; and it is impossible to doubt that both parties, or all parties, recognised that there was an advantage in maintaining a practice from which the Commons had expressly precluded themselves after the debate on the Grand Remonstrance, and which formed thereupon a special distinction of the peerage. I may here observe that the first protest with reasons entered in the Journals of the Irish House of Lords was in 1695, and that the practice was plainly borrowed from English procedure. But the Lord Lieutenant, or Lord Deputy, of Ireland claimed and exercised the right of entering his protest against the proceedings of the Irish Lords on the Journal of their House, a practice which was commenced by Wentworth, though it was not admitted without challenge.

The plea given in many of the older protests, that the parties subscribing wish to clear themselves from the consequences which they foresee as likely to ensue from the action of the majority, seems to imply that the Lords conceived themselves, in their capacity of hereditary counsellors of the Crown, liable to the consequences of having given ill advice, or of having assented to an injudicious act of legislation. The responsibility of ministerial

acts on the part of the King's advisers had lately been affirmed by a terrible example, the temper of the Commons was suspicious and irritable, and it is by no means improbable that a certain section of the Peers was ready to adopt a proceeding which should put them in the most favourable light. The King had given his assent to the Triennial Bill on the 11th of February, 1641, and on the 10th of May had assented to another measure, making the Long Parliament perpetual. By this Act the Commons were put on an equality with the Lords, as regards the permanence of the existing Chamber, and were enabled, by freely using the power of expulsion, to systematically depress the opponents of their measures, while they possessed other privileges, some generally conceded, others almost daily assumed, of a most formidable and inclusive character.

To confirm this interpretation of the motives which influenced the Peers in adopting the practice of protesting with reasons, it may be observed, that all the protests with reasons which are entered on the Journals by the Peers during the existence of the Long Parliament, with one exception (viii), advocate the views entertained by the extreme party in the Lower House.

After a debate, which lasted from nine in the morning of the 22nd of November, till two in the morning of the 23rd of November, 1641, the Grand Remonstrance was carried by 159 votes to 148 in the House of Commons. On this the minority, led by Hyde, desired leave to protest. On the 24th and 25th of November the question as to whether protestation should be allowed was warmly debated. The suggestion was opposed by Pym and others. Their arguments, chiefly derived from the fact that the practice was unknown in the Commons, were supported by significant threats directed against those who presumed to claim the right. On the other hand, Hyde informs us that, while he admitted that he did not know the ancient customs of the House of Commons, though 'he well knew it was a very ancient custom in the House of Peers,' he said, 'he did not understand why a Commoner should not have the same liberty if he desired not to be involved in any vote, which he thought might possibly be inconvenient to him; that he only desired leave to protest against

printing the Remonstrance, which he thought was not in many respects lawful for them to do, and might prove pernicious to the public peace.' Permission was of course refused, and Palmer, one of the would be protesters was sent to the Tower, though he was subsequently restored to his place in the House. The antiquity of the custom in the Lords does not, on an inspection of the Journals, seem to rest on any other proof than the insertion of dissentients' names in the record during a part of the Tudor period.

The motive of this attempt of Palmer and Hyde has not, I think, been hitherto explained, but seems to me easily discoverable from certain intelligible facts, some of which have been collected out of D'Ewes' manuscript Journal by Mr. Forster. The Parliament which met on the 3rd of November 1640 was determined to exact guarantees against personal government from Charles, the Peers being as resolute as the Commons, though it was natural that the hereditary branch of the legislature should be content with less than the Commons proposed or attempted. Experience proved that the King was equally determined on maintaining all he could by every expedient which he could adopt, and that he entertained very vindictive memories against all who were disposed to thwart or restrain him, and this probably because he believed that any invasion or limitation of his prerogative was treason and impiety. It was, I am persuaded, for this reason that the Lords adopted the temporary and singular expedient of omitting the register of attendance from their Journals. It was for the same reason that the Commons adhered so tenaciously to their privilege of secrecy; that, when the designs of the King's party became manifest, they punished all customary breaches of privilege with such severity, and that they invented new offences against Parliamentary liberty or right.

It is well known that a reaction set in after the death of Strafford, and the imprisonment or exile of the King's former counsellors. It appears certain that many of those who had urged the attainder of Strafford took advantage of this feeling, that they went over to the King's party, with the view of becoming his

ministers, that they intrigued against the policy of Pym and Hampden (while they attempted to negotiate with them for the acceptance of office) both in England and in Scotland, and that, being suspected or discovered, they were the occasion and the opponents of the Grand Remonstrance, which was originally devised by Lord Digby, but who subsequently become one of Hyde's followers. These facts have been illustrated in detail by Mr. Forster.

On the 9th of September, 1641, six Peers, belonging to the Parliamentary party, protest, for the first time, with reasons. Lord Clarendon, writing many years after the event, says, that he stated in the debate of the 23rd of November, 1641, that the custom was very ancient with the Peers. We know, however, from the Journals that this statement must have been incorrect, and we know enough of Lord Clarendon's accuracy, in every particular which affected his own conduct and character, to entertain a very reasonable suspicion that he never said anything of the kind, as he might have been immediately refuted. That he tried to claim the right of protest is certain, that he gave reasons more or less specious for his plea is highly probable, but he was far too prudent a person to allege that to be an ancient privilege which could have been easily proved to be a novelty.

The entry of the protest of the 9th of September was an act of considerable courage. The Houses rose on that day for a short recess, that is, till the 20th of October, the King having left Scotland exactly a month before, in order, it has been proved, to get such information as would enable him to put the charge of treasonable correspondence with the Scotch insurgents on Pym and Hampden. At such a crisis the entry of names with reasons why the dissentient Peers objected to take any action whatever, except concurrently with the Commons, on a matter of ecclesiastical policy, was a challenge to Charles, and was certain to expose the dissentients to the King's anger, in even a greater degree than it would the leaders of the Commons. On this occasion the six Peers had the spirit to repudiate the secrecy with which their own House had protected its proceedings, as far as their own safety was concerned, and they did so repeatedly afterwards. I am not sur