ABSTRACT

The revival of House of Lords judicature in the Parliament of 1621 began quietly and unobtrusively. Strictly speaking, the revival got underway on 3 March. The cause was a private one and the request for judicial assistance came, not from the Commons, but from the king. On that day James I forwarded to the Lords the petition of Edward Ewer asking that the record of Ewer’s case in King’s Bench be removed into the upper house for their review. The case signalled the revival of the Lords’ appellate authority over the court of King’s Bench-a jurisdiction long established but unused since 1589.1 The proceedings went entirely unnoticed. What seemed far more important at the time was the request made five days later by Sir Edward Coke on behalf of the House of Commons. Admonishing the Lords to ‘tread in the steps of your noble progenitors’, Coke pressed them to assume once again the role of judges and take responsibility for the trial and punishment of the notorious patentee, Sir Giles Mompesson.2 The very public proceedings which followed Coke’s demand-the trial of Mompesson and the subsequent impeachment proceedings against Sir Francis Michell, Sir John Bennett and Lord Chancellor Bacon-entirely overshadowed the private proceedings effectively initiated by the king. But in fact Ewer’s appeal (however inconspicuous) was every bit as important as Coke’s. Intentionally or not, it opened the door to the resumption of private party litigation in the upper chamber. His was the first of more than a dozen such petitions which the Lords would receive and accept in the 1621 Parliament, and those petitions would establish an all important foundation for a dramatic expansion of the Lords’ judicial responsibilities over the decade. Though their number was small, these cases still required that the Lords reallocate time and personnel to their hearing. Committees had to be appointed, administrative procedures put in place and new rules devised to govern the process. It was all done in a very business-like mannerefficiently, purposefully and, notably, without comment, but a major step had been taken all the same.3