impeachment, which it
was their business to manage, thus altered at the sudden {170}
dictation of the other chamber. The House of Commons was growing in
importance every day; the House of Lords was proportionately losing its
influence. The Commons determined that they would conduct the
impeachment in their own way or not at all. Doubtless some of them,
most of them, were glad to be well out of the whole affair. July 1st
was fixed for the renewal of the proceedings. Some fruitless
conferences between Lords and Commons wasted two days, and on the
evening of July 3d the Lords sat in Westminster Hall, and invited by
proclamation the accusers of Oxford to appear. No manager came forward
to conduct the impeachment on the part of the Commons. The Peers sat
for a quarter of an hour, as if waiting for a prosecutor, well knowing
that none was coming. A solemn farce was played. The Peers went back
to their chamber, and there a motion was made acquitting "Robert, Earl
of Oxford and Earl Mortimer," on the ground that no charge had been
maintained against him. A crowd without hailed the adoption of the
motion with cheers. Oxford was released from the Tower, and nothing
more was ever heard of his impeachment. The Duke of Marlborough was
furious with rage at Oxford's escape, and the duchess is described as
"almost distracted that she could not obtain her revenge." Magnanimity
was not a characteristic virtue of the early days of the Georges.

[Sidenote: 1718--Disabilities of dissenters]

This was what has sometimes been called the honorable acquittal of
Oxford. An English judge once spoke humorously of a prisoner having
been "honorably acquitted on a flaw in the indictment." Harley's was
like this: it was not an acquittal, and it was not honorable to the man
impeached, the House that forebore to press the impeachment, or the
House that contrived his escape from trial. Oxford had been committed
to the Tower and impeached for reasons that had little to do with his
guilt or innocence, or with true public policy; he was released from
prison and relieved from further proceedings in just the same way.
There was not evidence against {171} him on which he could be convicted
of high-treason, and this was well known to his enemies when they first
consigned him to the Tower. But there could not be the slightest moral
doubt on the mind of any man that Oxford had intrigued with the
Stuarts, and had endeavored to procure their resto