Word: woolsack
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...forgotten in England. At each the King nodded, and the deputy clerk droned "His Majesty doth assent." But as a warning that no individual may supersede Parliament, Ottawa's seven old men of the Supreme Court filed into the Senate chamber and plumped down on a big circular woolsack, from which they could symbolically keep an eye on everyone. After that Their Majesties received the 70-odd reporters covering their trip...
...Printed proceedings of the House of Lords begin each day with the notation: "The Lord Chancellor took his seat on the Woolsack." In the time of Edward III, the Lord Chancellor actually sat upon a cushion stuffed with wool, to signify England's dependence upon her wool trade. Now the historic woolsack is a seat upholstered in red cloth. Great was the dismay of the Lords a month ago when the woolsack was found to contain common horsehair. No record of the change had been made. Last weekend, with the peers away for their Whitsuntide recess, the Lord Great...
...trickled towards him-Sir Gerald Woods Wollaston, Garter Principal King of Arms; the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England; the Earl of Ancaster, Lord Great Chamberlain; the Earl of Derby and the Marquess of Londonderry, two senior peers. They shuffled into position, marched up the aisle towards the woolsack whereon sat Viscount Hailsham, Lord Chancellor, speaker of the House of Lords. At each three steps they paused to bow. When at last they reached the woolsack, Earl Baldwin knelt, got up, moved to a reading desk where a clerk sonorously summoned him "to sit among the Lords...
Seated on the woolsack in his best robes and formal full-bottomed wig, Douglas McGarel Hogg, Viscount Hailsham and Lord High Chancellor, commanded Sir Henry John Fanshawe Badeley, Clerk of the Parliaments, to call the roll. About 100 of the realm's approximate total of 860 peers had arrived, this making an unusually large House of Lords...
...empty Throne symbolized the King. Upon the Dais in front of it, slightly more uncomfortable than on his usual woolsack, Viscount Hailsham sat down. The peers doffed their cocked hats. Garter King of Arms, a figure in black and cloth-of-gold, read the King's Commission signed by George V: "Know ye that Edward Southwell Russell, Lord de Clifford, stands indicted before...