These questions, she said, belonged only to the chancellor; and she had appointed him to confer with the judges, in order to settle all disputes with regard to elections.

The commons had the courage, a few days after, to vote, "That it was a most perilous precedent, where two knights of a county were duly elected, if any new writ should issue out for a second election without order of the house itself: that the discussing and adjudging of this and such like differences belonged only to the house; and that there should be no message sent to the lord chancellor, not so much as to inquire what he had done in the matter, because it was conceived to be a matter derogatory to the power and privilege of the house."[*] This is the most considerable, and almost only instance of parliamentary liberty, which occurs during the reign of that princess.
Outlaws, whether on account of debts or crimes, had been declared by the judges[*] incapable of enjoying a seat in the house, where they must themselves be lawgivers; but this opinion of the judges had been frequently overruled.

I find, however, in the case of Vaughan,[**] who was questioned for an outlawry, that, having proved all his debts to have been contracted by suretyship, and to have been most of them honestly compounded, he was allowed, on account of these favorable circumstances, to keep his seat; which plainly supposes, that otherwise it would have been vacated on account of the outlawry.[***] When James summoned this parliament, he issued a proclamation,[****] in which, among many general advices, which, like a kind tutor, he bestowed on his people, he strictly enjoins them not to choose any outlaw for their representative.

And he adds, "If any person take upon him the place of knight, citizen, or burgess, not being duly elected, according to the laws and statutes in that behalf provided, and according to the purport, effect, and true meaning of this our proclamation, then every person so offending to be fined or imprisoned for the same." A proclamation here was plainly put on the same footing with a law, and that in so delicate a point as the right of elections; most alarming circumstances, had there not been reason to believe that this measure, being entered into so early in the king's reign, proceeded more from precipitation and mistake, than from any serious design of invading the privileges of parliament.[v] * D'Ewes, p.

397.
** 39 H.6.
*** Journ.Feb.8th, 1580.
**** In a subsequent parliament, that of the thirty-fifth of the queen, the commons, after a great debate, expressly voted, that a person outlawed might be elected.