Impeachment is a process in which the Parliament of the United Kingdom may prosecute and try individuals, normally holders of public office, for high treason or other high crimes and misdemeanours. First used to try William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer, during the English Good Parliament of 1376, it was a rare mechanism whereby Parliament was able to arrest and depose ministers of the Crown. The last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, in 1806; since then, other forms of democratic scrutiny (such as the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility and the recalling of members of Parliament) have been favoured, and impeachment has been considered as an obsolete—but still extant—power of Parliament.
This is in contrast to several other countries, where impeachment developed into a means to try officeholders for various misdeeds and has become a common process to the present day.
