Edward Floyd (impeached barrister)

The case led to an important constitutional decision on which forums can hold criminal trials with a political dimension and what permission is needed from the Crown and any second House.

It had done nothing on the situation in Bohemia, where the Elector Palatine and his English princess wife had been heavily defeated in a conflict that formed the first phase of the Thirty Years War.

The next morning he sent (an agent) to inquire upon what precedents the Commons grounded their claim to act as a judicial body in regard to offences which did not concern their privileges.

On 26 May, Floyd was condemned to be degraded from the estate (state) of a gentleman; his testimony not to be received; he was to be branded, whipped at the cart's tail, fined £5,000, and imprisoned in Newgate Prison for life.

The remainder of the sentence on Floyd seems to have resulted save that he was liberated on 16 July, after the new Lord Chancellor John Williams had prevailed with George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham to recommend to James I an exercise of his prerogative of mercy in the case of political prisoners.

[1] On the petition of Joane, his wife, the Lords on 6 December ordered his trunk and writings to be delivered up to her; the clerk first taking out Catholic books and religious objects.

[1] Joseph Robson Tanner in 1930 wrote in examining the constitution that the English House of Commons had clearly exceeded their jurisdiction.

[7] Charles Howard McIlwain commented that the claim the House made for jurisdiction under parliamentary privilege was "the most extensive and the least justifiable, perhaps, in all parliamentary history; and the far-fetched arguments brought forward in debates in support of the claim are of great interest", citing the record in Thomas Barrington's diary of the parliament.