the printed trials of cases before that court.

Your Committee finds but one instance, in the whole course of
Parliamentary impeachments, in which evidence offered by the Commons has
been rejected on the plea of inadmissibility or incompetence. This was
in the case of Lord Strafford's trial; when the copy of a warrant (the
same not having any attestation to authenticate it as a true copy) was,
on deliberation, not admitted,--and your Committee thinks, as the case
stood, with reason. But even in this one instance the Lords seemed to
show a marked anxiety not to narrow too much the admissibility of
evidence; for they confined their determination "to this individual
case," as the Lord Steward reported their resolution; and he
adds,--"They conceive this could be no impediment or failure in the
proceeding, because the truth and verity of it would depend on the first
general power given to execute it, which they who manage the evidence
for the Commons say they could prove."[36] Neither have objections to
evidence offered by the prisoner been very frequently made, nor often
allowed when made. In the same case of Lord Strafford, two books
produced by his Lordship, without proof by whom they were written, were
rejected, (and on a clear principle,) "as being private books, and no
records."[37] On both these occasions, the questions were determined by
the Lords alone, without any resort to the opinions of the Judges. In
the impeachments of Lord Stafford, Dr. Sacheverell, and Lord Wintoun, no
objection to evidence appears in the Lords' Journals to have been
pressed, and not above one taken, which was on the part of the Managers.

Several objections were, indeed, taken to evidence in Lord
Macclesfield's trial.[38] They were made on the part of the Managers,
except in two instances, where the objections were made by the witnesses
themselves. They were all determined (those started by the Managers in