ment. By a standing order of the House of Lords, the Lord In parlia Chancellor, when addressing their Lordships, is to be uncovered; but he is covered when he addresses others, including deputation of the commons. When he appears in his official capacity in the presence of the Sovereign, or receives messengers of the House of Commons at the bar of the House of Lords, he bears in his hand the purse containing (or supposed to contain) the Great Seal. On other occasions it is carried by his pursebearer, or lies before him as the emblem of his authority. When he goes before a Committee of the House of Commons he wears his robes, and is attended by his mace-bearer and purse-bearer. Being seated, he puts on his hat to assert the dignity of the upper House; and then, having uncovered, gives his evidence. Although the Lord Chancellor no longer addresses the two Houses at the opening or close of a session of parliament, he still is the bearer of the royal speech, which, kneeling, he delivers into the hand of the Sovereign. When the Prince of Wales is to take the oaths for any purpose in the Court of Chancery, the Lord Chancellor meets him as he approaches Westminster Hall, and waits upon him into court. The Prince's Chancellor holds the book, and the oaths are read by the Master of the Rolls." The Lord Chancellor sits covered while the oaths are administered, the bar standing. The Lord Chancellor then waits on the Prince to the end of Westminster Hall.* When administering oaths to Prince of Wales. son. When a younger son of the King is to take the oaths, To King's the Lord Chancellor meets him at the steps leading from younger the Hall to the Court, and conducts him into court. The Master of the Rolls reads the oaths, the senior Master in Chancery holding the book. His Lordship sits covered, the bar standing. He then uncovers, takes the purse in his hand, and attends his Royal Highness down the steps into the Hall.† When peers take the oaths before the Lord Chancellor, To peers the deputy usher holds the book, while a deputy of the clerk * Case of Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. Dickens, xxix. in Chan cery. Lord Statute of the crown reads the oaths. The Lord Chancellor sits covered during the time the peers are in court, except at their entrance and departure, when he rises and bows to them.* When the Lord Mayor of London comes into the Court of Chancery on Lord Mayor's Day, and by the Recorder invites the Lord Chancellor to dinner at Guildhall, the Lord Chancellor remains covered, and does not return any answer to the invitation.† I have only further to state respecting the privileges and respecting disabilities of the office of the Lord Chancellor, that by apparel of Chancellor. stat. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 13., he is entitled "to weare in his apparell velvet satene and other silkes of any colours excepte purpure, and any manner of furres except cloke genettes.' And now let us proceed to the Lives of the distinguished men who have held the office thus imperfectly described. * Dickens, xxxii. Ex relatione a Lord Chancellor who never would be wanting in any point of due courtesy to high or low-Lord Lyndhurst. CHAPTER I. OF THE CHANCELLORS UNDER THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGS. It has been too much the fashion to neglect our history and antiquities prior to the Norman conquest. But to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors not only are we indebted for our language and for the foundation of almost all the towns and villages in England, but for our political institutions; and to them we may trace the origin of whatever has most benefited and distinguished us as a nation.* It is a point of filial duty incumbent upon us, to commemorate and to honour the individuals among them who in any department attained to great eminence. Of those who filled the office of Chancellor under the Anglo-Saxon kings, little has been handed down to us; but that little ought not to be allowed to fall into oblivion. According to Selden, Ethelbert, the first Christian king among the Saxons, had AUGMENDUS for his "Chancellor' or Referendarius, the officer who received petitions and supplications addressed to the Sovereign, and made out writs and mandates as Custos Legis. There is great reason to believe that he was one of the benevolent ecclesiastics who accompanied Augustine from Rome on his holy mission, and that he assisted in drawing up the Code of Laws then published, which materially softened and improved many of the customs which had prevailed while the Scandinavian divinities were still worshipped in England. † There are three others whose names are transmitted to us as having been Chancellors to Anglo-Saxon kings without any ⚫ The descendants of the Anglo-Saxons seem destined to be by far the most numerous and powerful race of mankind,-occupying not only the British Isles in Europe, but the whole of America from Mexico to the Polar Seas, and the whole of Australia and Polynesia. The English language will soon be spoken by an infinitely greater number of civilised men than ever was the Greek, the Latin, or the French. † Selden's Office of Chancellor, 2. Dugd. Or. Jur. 32. Philpot's Catalogue of Chancellors. Spel. Gloss. Cancellarius, p. 109. CHAP. I. Merits of the Anglo Saxons. A. D. 605. CHAP. I. A. D. 758. A. D. 827. IN, Chan cellor to history attached to them, legendary or authentic,-CENWONA, under Offa, king of the Mercians, BOSA, under Withlofe, and SWITHULPHUS, under Berthulph.* Next comes the Chancellor so celebrated for his pluvious St. SWITH- propensity, St. SwITHIN, who held the office under two sovereigns, and of whom much that is true, as well as much Egbert and that is fabulous, has been transmitted to us. We can trace his history as certainly as that of Bede or Alcuin, and he left like them, among his countrymen, a bright reputation for learning and ability, which was rationally cherished till obscured by the miracles afterwards imputed to him. Ethelwulf. A. D. 836. Swithin was a native of Wessex, and was born at the very commencement of the ninth century. He was educated in a monastery at Winchester, then the capital of the kingdom. He prosecuted his studies with such ardour that he made wonderful proficiency in all the knowledge of the age, and having been ordained presbyter in 830 by the Bishop of Helmaston, was selected by King Egbert for his chaplain, and tutor to his son Ethelwulf. † He soon showed a capacity for state affairs, and was placed in the office of Chancellor, continuing, like his successor, à-Becket, while intrusted with the administration of justice, to superintend the education of the heir-apparent. He is said to have enjoyed the confidence of the King without interruption, and by his counsels to have contributed to the consolidation of the states of the Heptarchy into one great kingdom. On the accession of his royal pupil to the throne, he retained his office of Chancellor, and was in still higher favour. So wise a minister was he esteemed, that William of Malmesbury, referring to his sway, says the ancient opinion of Plato was verified in this reign, that "a state would be happy when philosophers were kings, or kings were philosophers.” Alstan, Bishop of Sherborne, took a more conspicuous lead, and • Selden's Office of Chancellor, 2. Dugd. Or. Jur. 32. Philpot's Catalogue of Chancellors. Spel. Gloss. Cancellarius, p. 109. William of Malmesbury represents that he was employed in affairs of state before he had the care of the King's son. "Naturâ, industriâque laudabilis auditum Regis non effugit. Quocirca illum hactenus excoluit, ut et multa negotiorum ejus consilio transigeret, et filium Adulfum ejus magisterio locaret." -W. Malm. 242. I. several times in person conducted the army to battle against CHAP. the Danes; but Swithin guided the counsels of the sovereign as well as being personally beloved by him. He was now made Bishop of Winchester, being recorded as the 17th prelate who had filled that see. He proved a devoted friend to the church, hitherto slenderly provided for among the Anglo-Saxons, and he procured a law to pass in the Wittenagemot for the universal and compulsory payment of tithes. But the nation was most of all indebted to him for instilling the rudiments of science, heroism, and virtue into the infant mind of the most illustrious of our sovereigns. The son of Ethelwulf, afterwards Alfred the Great, was, from childhood, placed under the care of the Chancellor, who assisted his mother in teaching him to read and to learn the songs of the Scalds, and afterwards accompanied him on a pilgrimage to Rome, taking the opportunity of pointing out to him the remains of classical antiquity visible in the twilight of refinement which still lingered in Italy. On Swithin's return to England, his last years were disturbed by the successes of the Danish invaders, and not having the military turn of some ecclesiastics and Chancellors, he shut himself up in his episcopal house, employing himself in acts of piety and charity. He died on the 2d of July, 862, having directed that his body should be buried, not in the Cathedral, but in the churchyard among the poor." He was much admired by ecclesiastics at Rome, as well as in his own country, having first established in England, for the benefit of the Pope, the payment called "Peter's pence." In consequence, about fifty years after his death, he was canonised. Now comes the legend of St. Swithin. It was thought that the body of the Saint ought to be translated from the churchyard to be deposited under the high altar, and the 15th of July was fixed for that ceremony, when there were to be the most gorgeous processions ever seen in England. But he highly disapproved of this disregard of his dying injunc * “ Jam vero vitæ præsenti valefacturus pontificali authoritate præcepit astantibus, ut extra ecclesiam cadaver suum humarent; ubi et pedibus prætereuntium et stillicidiis ex alto rorantibus esset obnoxium."- Wm. of Malm. 242. |