Impeachment
An impeachment is a criminal trial initiated in the House of Commons with the House of Lords acting as judges. It was first used during the 14th century, fell into disuse from the mid-15th century and was revived during the 17th century at the instigation of Sir Edward Coke in the Parliament of 1621 to ruin the career of his rival Sir Francis Bacon.
Attempts were made to impeach the Duke of Buckingham during the first two Parliaments of Charles I's reign. Each time, the King dissolved Parliament rather than allow his favourite to come to trial. When the Long Parliament met in 1640, the King's unpopular ministers the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud were impeached within weeks of Parliament assembling. Rumours that Parliament was planning to impeach Queen Henrietta Maria because of her involvement in alleged Catholic plots precipitated the King's disastrous attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1642.
Impeachment continued to be used occasionally throughout the 17th and 18th centuries; its last use in Britain was against Viscount Melville in 1806. It is still on the statute books and a similar procedure is part of the constitution of the United States.
Attainder
An Act or Bill of Attainder is an Act of Parliament which decrees that an accused person is guilty of treason with no requirement to prove it by precise points of law. The "attainted" person is declared a traitor and is subject to the death penalty; his property is forfeited and his descendants disinherited. Attainders were used frequently during the Wars of the Roses and continued to be used by the Tudors, particularly for punishing rebels. The Long Parliament resorted to attainders to condemn Strafford and Laud because neither could be proved guilty of the charges brought against them.
In May 1660, with the Restoration of the monarchy imminent, the Convention Parliament passed retrospective acts of attainder on the regicides John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and Thomas Pride. The corpses of Bradshaw, Cromwell and Ireton were exhumed and hung in chains at Tyburn.
Few attainders were passed after the Restoration until the Jacobite rebellions of the 18th century. The last was passed in 1798 against the Irish rebel Lord Fitzgerald. The procedure was abolished in 1870.