After the English House of Commons had impeached Wentworth (now earl of Strafford) of high treason on 11 November 1640, the Ulster presbyterians drew up a petition to the English parliament (presented by Sir John Clotworthy about the end of April 1641), containing thirty-one charges against the Irish Anglican prelates, and asking that their exiled pastors might be reinstated. Of the Ulster bishops, Bramhall was most in the firing line. The Irish Commons, on the motion of Audley Mervyn and others, 4 March 1641, impeached him, with the lord chancellor, the chief justice of the common pleas, and Sir George Radcliffe, as participants in the alleged treason of Strafford. Bramhall left Derry for Dublin, and took his place in the Irish House of Lords. He was imprisoned and accused of unconstitutional acts ; his defence was that he had equitably sought the good of the church, and that his hands were clean. He wrote, on 26 April, to Ussher in London, and through the king Bramhall was liberated without acquittal: he returned to Derry.