Page:Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons (4th ed, 1818, vol I).djvu/34

14 What this sufficient remedy was does not appear; Elsynge, arguing from the Case of the Earl of Cornwall mentioned before, N" 9., supposes that as the law then stood, "the party contemning the Privilege of Parliament was to be committed to prison, to make fine and ransom to the King, to render to the party grieved such damages as the Lords of the Parliament shall award; and to answer the King's Steward and Marshal, if the contempt be Within the Verge, for the wrong done to them: which (says he) is a greater punishment than the Commons required; and haply they knew it not; but this being an antient custom, and due by prescription, the Lords thought it more honourable to retain it than to enact a new law ."

This interpretation of the answer appears to me extraordinary, and not so probable as what Prynn supposes in the Fourth Register, p. 725. "That the King refused to grant this their petition or pass it into a future standing law, because he reputed the penalties in it against such as arrested any Members or their Servants by legal process, though knowing them to be such, 'by fine and ransom to himself, and treble damages to the party,' to be overharsh and penal, against such who had just case of action against them, and a means to obstruct the free course of the common law and justice; their prevention of arrests or enlargement by a Writ of Privilege or Habeas Corpus, which the law allowed them in such cases, (if not in execution) being a sufficient remedy, whereby the prosecutor lost the benefit of his arrest, and was put to the charge of new process without any arrest, during the session." Rh