422 LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 



have had farther direction by a gentleman, to whom you 

 committed some care and consideration of your lordship s 

 intentions therein. I can only give this account of it, that 

 never was any man more willing or ready to do your lord 

 ship service than myself; and in that you then spake of, I 

 had been most forward to have done whatsoever I had been, 

 by farther direction, used in. But I understood that your 

 lordship s pleasure that way was changed. Since, my lord, 

 I was advised with, touching the judgments given in the 

 late parliament. For them (if it please your lordship to 

 hear my weak judgment expressed freely to you) I conceive 

 thus : First, that admitting it were no session, but only a 

 convention, as the proclamation calls it, yet the judgments 

 given in the upper house (if no other reason be against 

 them) are good; for they are given by the lords, or the 

 upper house, by virtue of that ordinary authority, which 

 they have as the supreme court of judicature; which is 

 easily to be conceived, without any relation to the matter 

 of session, which consists only in the passing of acts, or 

 not passing them, with the royal assent. And though no 

 session of the three states together be without such acts so 

 passed, yet every part of the parliament severally did its 

 own acts legally enough to continue, as the acts of other 

 courts of justice are done. And why should any doubts 

 be, but that a judgment out of the King s Bench, or Ex 

 chequer-chamber, reversed there, had been good, although 

 no session ? For there was truly a parliament, truly an 

 upper house (which exercised by itself this power of judi 

 cature), although no session. Yet withal, my lord, I doubt, 

 it will fall out, upon fuller consideration, to be thought a 

 session also. Were it not for the proclamation, I should 

 be clearly of that mind ; neither doth the clause, in the act 

 of subsidy, hinder it. For that only prevented the deter 

 mination of the session at that instant ; but did not prevent 

 the being of a session, whensoever the parliament should 

 be dissolved. But because that point was resolved in the 

 proclamation, and also in the commission of dissolution on 

 the 8th of February, I will rest satisfied. 



But there are also examples of former times, that may 

 direct us in that point of the judgment, in regard there is 

 store of judgments of parliament, especially under Edward 

 I. and Edward II. in such conventions as never had, for 

 aught appears, any act passed in them. 



Next, my lord, I conceive thus: that by reason there is 

 no record of those judgments, it may be justly thought that 



