466 LETTERS RELATING TO 



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 tbat 

 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 

 tbe King s Bench, or Exchequer-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 judicature 

 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 procla 

 mation, I should be clearly of that mind ; neither 

 doth the clause, in the act of subsidy, hinder it. For 

 that only prevented the determination of the session 

 at that instant ; but did not prevent the being of a 

 session, whensoever the parliament should be dis 

 solved. But because that point was resolved in the 

 proclamation, and also in the commission of dissolu 

 tion on the 8th of February, I will rest satisfied. 

 But there are also examples of former times, that 



