This right seems to have been asserted by the Managers for the Commons in the case of Lord Stafford, 32 Charles II.[77] The Managers in that case claimed it as the right of the Commons to produce witnesses for the purpose of fortifying their former evidence.  Their claim was admitted by the court.  It is an adjudged case in the Law of Parliament.  Your Committee is well aware that the notorious perjury and infamy of the witnesses in the trial of Lord Stafford has been used to throw a shade of doubt and suspicion on all that was transacted on that occasion.  But there is no force in such an objection.  Your Committee has no concern in the defence of these witnesses, nor of the Lords who found their verdict on such testimony, nor of the morality of those who produced it.  Much may be said to palliate errors on the part of the prosecutors and judges, from the heat of the times, arising from the great interests then agitated.  But it is plain there may be perjury in witnesses, or even conspiracy unjustly to prosecute, without the least doubt of the legality and regularity of the proceedings in any part.  This is too obvious and too common to need argument or illustration.  The proceeding in Lord Stafford’s case never has, now for an hundred and fourteen years, either in the warm controversies of parties, or in the cool disquisitions of lawyers or historians, been questioned.  The perjury of the witnesses has been more doubted at some periods than the regularity of the process has been at any period.  The learned lawyer who led for the Commons in that impeachment (Serjeant Maynard) had, near forty years before, taken a forward part in the great cause of the impeachment of Lord Strafford, and was, perhaps, of all men then in England, the most conversant in the law and usage of Parliament.  Jones was one of the ablest lawyers of his age.  His colleagues were eminent men.

In the trial of Lord Strafford, (which has attracted the attention of history more than any other, on account of the importance of the cause itself, the skill and learning of the prosecutors, and the eminent abilities of the prisoner,) after the prosecutors for the Commons had gone through their evidence on the articles, after the prisoner had also made his defence, either upon each severally, or upon each body of articles as they had been collected into one, and the Managers had in the same manner replied, when, previous to the general concluding reply of the prosecutors, the time of the general summing up (or recollection, as it was called) of the whole evidence on the part of Lord Strafford arrived, the Managers produced new evidence.  Your Committee wishes to call the particular attention of the House to this case, as the contest between the parties did very nearly resemble the present, but principally because the sense of the Lords on the Law of Parliament, in its proceedings with regard to the reception of evidence, is there distinctly laid down:  so is the report of the Judges, relative to the usage of the courts below, full of equity and reason, and in perfect conformity with the right for which we contended in favor of the public, and in favor of the Court of Peers itself.  The matter is as follows.  Your Committee gives it at large.