Edward Floyd, Floud or Lloyd (died 1648) was an Englishman impeached and sentenced by the Parliament of England in 1621 for speaking disparagingly of Frederick V, Elector Palatine (by Floyd's Case).
Early life
thumb|Victorian depiction of the old form of the [[House of Commons of England twenty years after Floyd badmouthed (libelled) Elizabeth of Bohemia while in the Fleet Prison.]]
Floyd was a Roman Catholic barrister. He became steward in Shropshire to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk.
Floyd's case
In 1621, when Floyd was in the Fleet Prison at the instance (doing) of the Privy Council, he was impeached by the House of Commons for having said:
<blockquote>I have heard that Prague is taken; and Goodman Palsgrave and Goodwife Palsgrave have taken their heels; and as I have heard, Goodwife Palsgrave is taken prisoner.</blockquote>
These words, it was alleged, he spoke in a scornful manner, to insult the Prince Palatine and his wife Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was daughter to James I of England. The case led to an important constitutional decision on which forums can hold criminal trials with a political dimension and what permission is needed from the Crown and any second House.
Case in the Commons
The case came to the House of Commons on 30 April. By then it had been in session since February. It had done nothing on the situation in Bohemia, where the Elector Palatine and his English princess wife had been heavily defeated in a conflict that formed the first phase of the Thirty Years War. On that day the influential parliamentarian Sir Edwin Sandys encouraged the Commons to take punitive action. The feeling of the House was that in this matter they could make their mark in foreign policy, not otherwise in their remit.
The Commons agreed on 1 May that Floyd should pay a fine of £1,000 (), stand in the pillory at three stands for two hours at each, and be carried from place to place on a horse without a saddle, with his face towards the horse's tail, and holding the tail in his hand. The king, however, objected to the Commons taking up the matter. The next morning he sent (an agent) to inquire upon what precedents the Commons grounded their claim to act as a judicial body in regard to offences which did not concern their privileges.
The House of Lords intervenes
On 5 May the Commons and Lords conferred on the case. Coke worked to salvage the concept of the Commons as court of record, by having the prior record annulled as the lesser of two evils, since the king and Lords appeared set to deny the claim.
A debate of several days then led to a conference of the two houses, when it was agreed that the accused should be arraigned before the Lords, and that a declaration should be entered on the journals that his trial before the commons should not prejudice the just rights of either house. Charles Howard McIlwain commented that the claim the House made for jurisdiction under parliamentary privilege was "the most extensive and the least justifiable, perhaps, in all parliamentary history; and the far-fetched arguments brought forward in debates in support of the claim are of great interest", citing the record in Thomas Barrington's diary of the parliament.
A collection, made by Sir Harbottle Grimstone, of the proceedings is kept as Harleian MS. 6274, art. 2.