Nine portmen (like aldermen, but town councillors of a port city) of the chartered Corporation of Ipswich claimed in a writ of scire facias that they had been ejected wrongfully and therefore that the contemporary portman was an impostor.

So that after an indictment and conviction at common law, this authority admits, "that the power of amotion is incident to every corporation."

And there is no authority since Bagg's case, which says that the power of trial as well as amotion, for the second sort of offences, is not incident to every corporation.

In Lord Bruce's case, 2 Strange, 819, the Court says, "the modern opinion has been, that a power of amotion is incident to the corporation."

Unless the power is incident, franchises or offices might be forfeited for offences; and yet there would be no means to carry the law into execution.

If so, a corporation, by virtue of an incident power, may raise to themselves authority to remove for just cause, though not expressly given by charter or prescription.

The power of amotion was there exercised by the select body; and the cause was insufficient; the offence not being any of the three kinds for which a corporator could be disfranchised.

For though the corporation has a power of amotion by charter or prescription, yet, as to the first kind of misbehaviours, which have no immediate relation to the duty of an office, but only make the party infamous and unfit to execute any public franchise: these ought to be established by a previous conviction by a jury, according to the law of the land; (as in cases of general perjury, forgery, or libelling, &c.).