d.
Wharton, with a large following, went up to the Lords, and informed
them that the Commons had resolved to impeach the Duke. A committee
of managers was appointed to draw up the articles and to prepare the
evidence. [583]

The articles were speedily drawn; but to the chain of evidence one
link appeared to be wanting. That link Robart, if he had been severely
examined and confronted with other witnesses, would in all probability
have been forced to supply. He was summoned to the bar of the Commons.
A messenger went with the summons to the house of the Duke of Leeds, and
was there informed that the Swiss was not within, that he had been three
days absent, and that where he was the porter could not tell. The Lords
immediately presented an address to the King, requesting him to give
orders that the ports might be stopped and the fugitive arrested. But
Robart was already in Holland on his way to his native mountains.

The flight of this man made it impossible for the Commons to proceed.
They vehemently accused Leeds of having sent away the witness who alone
could furnish legal proof of that which was already established by
moral proof. Leeds, now at ease as to the event of the impeachment, gave
himself the airs of an injured man. "My Lords," he said, "the conduct of
the Commons is without precedent. They impeach me of a high crime; they
promise to prove it; then they find that they have not the means of
proving it; and they revile me for not supplying them with the means.
Surely they ought not to have brought a charge like this, without well
considering whether they had or had not evidence sufficient to support
it. If Robart's testimony be, as they now say, indispensable, why did
they not send for him and hear his story before they made up their
minds? They may thank their own intemperance, their own precipitancy,
for his disappearance. He is a foreigner; he is timid; he hears that a
transaction in which he has been concerned has been pronounced by the
House of Commons to be highly criminal, that his master is impeached,
that his friend Bates is in prison, that his own turn is coming. He
naturally takes fright; he escapes to his own country; and, from what
I know of him, I will venture to predict that it will be long before he
trusts himself again within reach of the Speaker's warrant. But what is
that to me? Am I to lie all my life under the stigma of an accusation
like this, merely because the violence of my accusers ha