ABSTRACT
The eighteenth century began and ended with failed impeachment attempts. In 1701 Lords Portland, Orford, Halifax and Somers all survived efforts to impeach them for their roles in negotiating the Partition Treaties. At the end of the period, there was the marathon attempt to impeach Warren Hastings. Between these two extremes, the period witnessed a clutch of impeachments, beginning with that of the firebrand cleric, Henry Sacheverell, and ending with proceedings against the rebellious Jacobite lords in the mid-1740s. It is striking that there were not more attempts to impeach in the years after 1747 and that neither obvious examples like John Wilkes or Lord George Gordon were proceeded against in this fashion. Beginning with the impeachment of Henry Sacheverell and culminating with the trial of Lord Lovat in 1747, this chapter will consider the circumstances in which impeachment was employed and why, in spite of threats to use it again, impeachment then went into abeyance for 40 years.
