Word: woolsack
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Last week the Royal Gallery of the Houses of Parliament was being "renovated" for the coming trial. A woolsack was installed for Viscount Hailsham to sit upon in his capacity as Lord High Chancellor and a gilt chair from the King's robing room for use in his other capacity as Lord High Steward. For this occasion the House of Lords official known as Black Rod will carry not his usual black rod but a white rod, for the reason that after sentence is delivered the Lord High Steward must break Black Rod's white rod across...
Gallop to Woolsack. Battling Protestant that he was, "F. E." fought the granting of "home rule" to Ireland before the War?for this would have meant rule of Irish Protestants (Ulstermen) by Irish Catholics. When violence seemed the only way to head off home rule, the prizefighter's grandson went to Ireland as chief aide to Sir Edward Carson, dashed about fomenting shenanigans at such a rate that admiring Irish nicknamed him "The Galloper...
...evening, after the election of 1918, he was asked by Prime Minister David Lloyd George to make the most momentous decision of his life, given only until morning to decide: Would he or would he not accept the supreme judicial office of Lord High Chancellor, sit upon the sacred woolsack...
Acceptance meant retirement from politics, burning his ambition to become Prime Minister. The Galloper took the woolsack (a large red cloth cushion stuffed with wool), sat on it as a Lord Chancellor must, rested his foot on it now and then as a Lord Chancellor must not. In 1919 he became Baron Birkenhead, in 1921 accepted a Viscountcy commemorating his wife's maiden name (Furneaux), and in 1922 was created Earl of Birkenhead with an arrogant-humorous armorial motto of his own devising Faber Meae Fortunae: "[I'm] the Smith of my own Fortune...
...scandal of all England the Earl of Birkenhead when Lord Chancellor occasionally rested his foot on the august woolsack...