Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/418

 402 and conequently not peers with the nobility. As to peerees, no proviion was made for their trial when accued of treaon or felony, till after Eleanor duches of Glouceter, wife to the lord protector, had been accued of treaon and found guilty of witchcraft, in an eccleiatical ynod, through the intrigues of cardinal Beaufort. This very extraordinary trial gave occaion to a pecial tatute, 20 Hen. VI. c. 9. which enacts that peerees, either in their own right or by marriage, hall be tried before the ame judicature as peers of the realm. If a woman, noble in her own right, marries a commoner, he till remains noble, and hall be tried by her peers: but if he be only noble by marriage, then by a econd marriage, with a commoner, he loes her dignity; for as by marriage it is gained, by marriage it is alo lot. Yet if a duches dowager marries a baron, he continues a duches till; for all the nobility are pares, and therefore it is no degradation. A peer, or peeres (either in her own right or by marriage) cannot be arreted in civil caes : and they have alo many peculiar privileges annexed to their peerage in the coure of judicial proceedings. A peer, itting in judgment, gives not his verdict upon oath, like an ordinary juryman, but upon his honour : he anwers alo to bills in chancery upon his honour, and not upon his oath ; but, when he is examined as a witnes either in civil or criminal caes, he mut be worn : for the repect, which the law hews to the honour of a peer, does not extend o far as to overturn a ettled maxim, that in judicio non creditur nii juratis. The honour of peers is however o highly tendered by the law, that it is much more penal to pread fale reports of them, and certain other great officers of the realm, than of other men: candal againt them being called by the peculiar name of candalum magnatum, and ubjected to peculiar punihment by divers antient tatutes. Rh