CHARLES II.

335

question bad never before been started, it migbtseem difficult to find principles, upon which itcould be decided ,s . By way of compromise, itwas agreed to set aside both candidates. Gregory,a lawyer, was chosen ; and the election wasratified by the king. It has ever since beenunderstood , that the choice of the speaker liesin the house ; but that the king retains the powerof rejecting any person disagreeable to him.

Seymour was deemed a great enemy toDanby ; and it was the influence of that noble-man, as commonly supposed, which had engagedthe king to enter into this ill-timed controversywith the commons. The impeachment, therefore,of Danby was on that account the sooner reviv-ed ; and it was maintained by the commons,that notwithstanding the intervening dissolution,every part of that proceeding stood in the famecondition in which it had been left by the lastparliament: A pretension, which, though unusual,seems tacitly to have been yielded them. Theking had before hand had the precaution to

" In i?66, the speaker said to Q. Elizabeth, thatwithout her allowance the election of the house was ofno significance. D’Ewes’s Journal , p. 97. In the par-liament '592 , 159? , the speaker , who was Sir EdwardCoke, advances a like position. D’Ewes, p. 459. Townshend,p. ?5. So that this pretension of the commons seems tohave been somewhat new; like many of their other powers'and privileges.

CHAP.

LXVII.

1679 *

nanby’s im-peachment.