CHAPTER III.
THE OLD HALL.
Near Westminster Abbey was an old Norman palace which was burnt in thetime of Henry VIII. Its wings were spared. In one of them Edward VI.placed the House of Lords, in the other the House of Commons. Neitherthe two wings nor the two chambers are now in existence. The whole hasbeen rebuilt.
We have already said, and we must repeat, that there is no resemblancebetween the House of Lords of the present day and that of the past. Indemolishing the ancient palace they somewhat demolished its ancientusages. The strokes of the pickaxe on the monument produce theircounter-strokes on customs and charters. An old stone cannot fallwithout dragging down with it an old law. Place in a round room aparliament which has been hitherto held in a square room, and it will nolonger be the same thing. A change in the shape of the shell changes theshape of the fish inside.
If you wish to preserve an old thing, human or divine, a code or adogma, a nobility or a priesthood, never repair anything about itthoroughly, even its outside cover. Patch it up, nothing more. Forinstance, Jesuitism is a piece added to Catholicism. Treat edifices asyou would treat institutions. Shadows should dwell in ruins. Worn-outpowers are uneasy in chambers freshly decorated. Ruined palaces accordbest with institutions in rags. To attempt to describe the House ofLords of other days would be to attempt to describe the unknown. Historyis night. In history there is no second tier. That which is no longeron the stage immediately fades into obscurity. The scene is shifted, andall is at once forgotten. The past has a synonym, the unknown.
The peers of England sat as a court of justice in Westminster Hall, andas the higher legislative chamber in a chamber specially reserved forthe purpose, called _The House of Lords_.
Besides the house of peers of England, which did not assemble as a courtunless convoked by the crown, two great English tribunals, inferior tothe house of peers, but superior to all other jurisdiction, sat inWestminster Hall. At the end of that hall they occupied adjoiningcompartments. The first was the Court of King's Bench, in which the kingwas supposed to preside; the second, the Court of Chancery, in which theChancellor presided. The one was a court of justice, the other a courtof mercy. It was the Chancellor who counselled the king to pardon; onlyrarely, though.
These two courts, which are still in existence, interpreted legislation,and reconstructed it somewhat, for the art of the judge is to carve thecode into jurisprudence; a task from which equity results as it bestmay. Legislation was worked up and applied in the severity of the greathall of Westminster, the rafters of which were of chestnut wood, overwhich spiders could not spread their webs. There are enough of them inall conscience in the laws.
To sit as a court and to sit as a chamber are two distinct things. Thisdouble function constitutes supreme power. The Long Parliament, whichbegan in November 1640, felt the revolutionary necessity for thistwo-edged sword. So it declared that, as House of Lords, it possessedjudicial as well as legislative power.
This double power has been, from time immemorial, vested in the House ofPeers. We have just mentioned that as judges they occupied WestminsterHall; as legislators, they had another chamber. This other chamber,properly called the House of Lords, was oblong and narrow. All the lightin it came from four windows in deep embrasures, which received theirlight through the roof, and a bull's-eye, composed of six panes withcurtains, over the throne. At night there was no other light than twelvehalf candelabra, fastened to the wall. The chamber of Venice was darkerstill. A certain obscurity is pleasing to those owls of supreme power.
A high ceiling adorned with many-faced relievos and gilded cornices,circled over the chamber where the Lords assembled. The Commons had buta flat ceiling. There is a meaning in all monarchical buildings. At oneend of the long chamber of the Lords was the door; at the other,opposite to it, the throne. A few paces from the door, the bar, atransverse barrier, and a sort of frontier, marked the spot where thepeople ended and the peerage began. To the right of the throne was afireplace with emblazoned pinnacles, and two bas-reliefs of marble,representing, one, the victory of Cuthwolf over the Britons, in 572; theother, the geometrical plan of the borough of Dunstable, which had fourstreets, parallel to the four quarters of the world. The throne wasapproached by three steps. It was called the royal chair. On the twowalls, opposite each other, were displayed in successive pictures, on ahuge piece of tapestry given to the Lords by Elizabeth, the adventuresof the Armada, from the time of its leaving Spain until it was wreckedon the coasts of Great Britain. The great hulls of the ships wereembroidered with threads of gold and silver, which had become blackenedby time. Against this tapestry, cut at intervals by the candelabrafastened in the wall, were placed, to the right of the throne, threerows of benches for the bishops, and to the left three rows of benchesfor the dukes, marquises, and earls, in tiers, and separated bygangways. On the three benches of the first section sat the dukes; onthose of the second, the marquises; on those of the third, the earls.The viscounts' bench was placed across, opposite the throne, and behind,between the viscounts and the bar, were two benches for the barons.
On the highest bench to the right of the throne sat the two archbishopsof Canterbury and York; on the middle bench three bishops, London,Durham, and Winchester, and the other bishops on the lowest bench. Thereis between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops thisconsiderable difference, that he is bishop "by divine providence,"whilst the others are only so "by divine permission." On the right ofthe throne was a chair for the Prince of Wales, and on the left, foldingchairs for the royal dukes, and behind the latter, a raised seat forminor peers, who had not the privilege of voting. Plenty offleurs-de-lis everywhere, and the great escutcheon of England over thefour walls, above the peers, as well as above the king.
The sons of peers and the heirs to peerages assisted at the debates,standing behind the throne, between the dais and the wall. A largesquare space was left vacant between the tiers of benches placed alongthree sides of the chamber and the throne. In this space, which wascovered with the state carpet, interwoven with the arms of GreatBritain, were four woolsacks--one in front of the throne, on which satthe Lord Chancellor, between the mace and the seal; one in front of thebishops, on which sat the judges, counsellors of state, who had theright to vote, but not to speak; one in front of the dukes, marquises,and earls, on which sat the Secretaries of State; and one in front ofthe viscounts and barons, on which sat the Clerk of the Crown and theClerk of the Parliament, and on which the two under-clerks wrote,kneeling.
In the middle of the space was a large covered table, heaped withbundles of papers, registers, and summonses, with magnificent inkstandsof chased silver, and with high candlesticks at the four corners.
The peers took their seats in chronological order, each according to thedate of the creation of his peerage. They ranked according to theirtitles, and within their grade of nobility according to seniority. Atthe bar stood the Usher of the Black Rod, his wand in his hand. Insidethe door was the Deputy-Usher; and outside, the Crier of the Black Rod,whose duty it was to open the sittings of the Courts of Justice with thecry, "Oyez!" in French, uttered thrice, with a solemn accent upon thefirst syllable. Near the Crier stood the Serjeant Mace-Bearer of theChancellor.
In royal ceremonies the temporal peers wore coronets on their heads, andthe spiritual peers, mitres. The archbishops wore mitres, with a ducalcoronet; and the bishops, who rank after viscounts, mitres, with abaron's cap.
It is to be remarked, as a coincidence at once strange and instructive,that this square formed by the throne, the bishops, and the barons, withkneeling magistrates within it, was in form similar to the ancientparliament in France under the two first dynasties. The aspect ofauthority was the same in France as in England. Hincmar, in histreatise, "De Ordinatione Sacri Palatii," described in 853 the sittingsof the House of Lords at Westminster in the eighteenth century. Strange,indeed! a description given nine hundred years before the existence ofthe thing described.
But what is history? An echo of
the past in the future; a reflex fromthe future on the past.
The assembly of Parliament was obligatory only once in every sevenyears.
The Lords deliberated in secret, with closed doors. The debates of theCommons were public. Publicity entails diminution of dignity.
The number of the Lords was unlimited. To create Lords was the menace ofroyalty; a means of government.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the House of Lords alreadycontained a very large number of members. It has increased still furthersince that period. To dilute the aristocracy is politic. Elizabeth mostprobably erred in condensing the peerage into sixty-five lords. The lessnumerous, the more intense is a peerage. In assemblies, the morenumerous the members, the fewer the heads. James II. understood thiswhen he increased the Upper House to a hundred and eighty-eight lords; ahundred and eighty-six if we subtract from the peerages the two duchiesof royal favourites, Portsmouth and Cleveland. Under Anne the totalnumber of the lords, including bishops, was two hundred and seven. Notcounting the Duke of Cumberland, husband of the queen, there weretwenty-five dukes, of whom the premier, Norfolk, did not take his seat,being a Catholic; and of whom the junior, Cambridge, the Elector ofHanover, did, although a foreigner. Winchester, termed first and solemarquis of England, as Astorga was termed sole Marquis of Spain, wasabsent, being a Jacobite; so that there were only five marquises, ofwhom the premier was Lindsay, and the junior Lothian; seventy-nineearls, of whom Derby was premier and Islay junior; nine viscounts, ofwhom Hereford was premier and Lonsdale junior; and sixty-two barons, ofwhom Abergavenny was premier and Hervey junior. Lord Hervey, the juniorbaron, was what was called the "Puisne of the House." Derby, of whomOxford, Shrewsbury, and Kent took precedence, and who was therefore butthe fourth under James II., became (under Anne) premier earl. Twochancellors' names had disappeared from the list of barons--Verulam,under which designation history finds us Bacon; and Wem, under which itfinds us Jeffreys. Bacon and Jeffreys! both names overshadowed, thoughby different crimes. In 1705, the twenty-six bishops were reduced totwenty-five, the see of Chester being vacant. Amongst the bishops somewere peers of high rank, such as William Talbot, Bishop of Oxford, whowas head of the Protestant branch of that family. Others were eminentDoctors, like John Sharp, Archbishop of York, formerly Dean of Norwich;the poet, Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, an apoplectic old man; andthat Bishop of Lincoln, who was to die Archbishop of Canterbury, Wake,the adversary of Bossuet. On important occasions, and when a messagefrom the Crown to the House was expected, the whole of this augustassembly--in robes, in wigs, in mitres, or plumes--formed out, anddisplayed their rows of heads, in tiers, along the walls of the House,where the storm was vaguely to be seen exterminating the Armada--almostas much as to say, "The storm is at the orders of England."