ABSTRACT
The history of House of Lords’ judicature after 1642 is clearly different from that which had gone before. As it did all things, the Civil War severely disrupted the judicial proceedings of the upper house. In simple practical terms, the radical depletion of its membership and the desertion of the greater part of its judicial personnel drastically impaired efficiency. It was difficult to delegate judicial responsibilities when the referees (both inside and outside the house) had disappeared. The committee structure, on which judicature largely depended, had collapsed and with it went the procedural mechanisms which had defined and ordered proceedings. Hearings in individual cases had to be conducted by the assembled house, which was understandably disinclined to devote the time and attention needed for private causes when the public ones had become so overwhelmingly important. By the same token, the credibility of the High Court had also been seriously undermined. The house could no longer claim to be a large and widely representative tribunal committed to mediating without prejudice between the legal interests of subject and subject, and between subject and sovereign. Nor, despite its protestations to the contrary, could the House be said to be exercising legal authority in the name of the Crown. The king’s success in establishing his government in exile, in holding Parliaments in Oxford and in convening courts of law had made that abundantly clear and cast a very long shadow over all the concurrent proceedings at Westminster.
