Lord Speaker the bar, and finish by walking up the Temporal (opposition) side toward the Woolsack. The Mace is placed on the Woolsack, where the Lord Speaker sits after a bishop has led the House in prayers. When the Sovereign appoints Lords Commissioners to perform certain actions on his or her behalf (for example, to open or prorogue Parliament, or formally declare Royal Assent), the Lord Speaker is one of them. The other Lords Commissioners, by convention, are the Leader of the House (who has acted as the principal Commissioner since the Lord Chancellor's functions were transferred to the Lord Speaker), the
Judicial functions of the House of Lords the Crown. The last impeachment trials were the Impeachment of Warren Hastings from 1788 to 1795 and the Impeachment of Viscount Melville in 1806. The novel "Clouds of Witness" (1926) by Dorothy L. Sayers depicts in the House of Lords the fictional trial of a duke who is accused of murder. Sayers researched and used the then current trial procedures. "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949) comedy from Ealing Studios features an almost identical scene. Disputes involving peerage claims were normally referred by the Crown to the House of Lords, perhaps because hereditary peers were, prior to the House of Lords