United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Lords being placed on their proper seats, and the Lord High Steward on the woolsack, the Clerk of the Crown in the Court of Chancery, after making three reverences to the Lord Steward, presented, on his knees, the King's commission; which, after the usual reverences, was placed on the table. A proclamation for silence was then heard.
The only path to the highest positions really open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's bench.
Vehement cheers from the ministerial benches; cries of "Order!" from the Opposition. A military lord rose to order, and appealed to the Woolsack. Lumley sat down as if chafed at the interruption; he had produced the effect he had desired, he had changed the public question at issue into a private quarrel; a new excitement was created; dust was thrown into the eyes of the House.
Sir Causticus Witherett, being asked some years since why a certain Chancellor, unjustly accused of intellectual dimness by his political adversaries and by the uninformed public, preferred his seat amongst the barons to his official place on the woolsack, is said to have replied: "The Lord Chancellor usually takes his seat amongst the peers whenever he can do so with propriety, because he is a highly nervous man, and when he is on the woolsack, he is apt to be frightened at finding himself all alone in the dark."
In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith, "if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past life, he must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more learned, honest, and conscientious than the mass of men has ever been, could in the course of one short life fall into such glaring and frightful rebellion against his own doctrines."
Six hundred stalwart warriors, of England's pride the best, Did grasp the lance and sabre on Balaclava's crest, And with their trusty leader, Lord Cardigan the brave, Charged up to spike the Russian guns or find a soldier's grave. And the refrain, which every man present sings with a face as solemn as my Lord Chancellor sitting on the Woolsack half an hour longer than usual, runs in this fashion:
"You are the laughing man, my Lord Montacute!" "I am not laughing, my Lord Dorchester." Lord Montacute made a sign to the Clerk of the Parliament, who rose from his woolsack, and confirmed to their lordships the fact of the admission of the new peer. Besides, he detailed the circumstances. "How wonderful!" said Lord Dorchester. "I was talking to the Bishop of Ely all the while."
Oh, that some such man as he were to sit upon our woolsack now; what would the world think, if when the mighty oracle commanded the next cause to come on, the reply should be, "Please your good lordship, there is no other!" Well might the smart epigrammatist write: When MORE some time had chancellor been, No MORE suits did remain; The same shall never MORE be seen, Till MORE be there again!
He gave as instances of the slight inequality at present enforced the circumstance that no Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.
He had with him only a small force, the signal fires had not been lighted, and the enemy were close at hand before he could prepare to meet them. "What shall we do?" he asked his men. "Shall we stay and fight, or draw back and gather men?" The answer came from an old peasant, Egil Woolsack: "Often have I fought, King Haakon, with King Harold, your father.
Word Of The Day