BRITISH PEERS AND THEIR RIGHTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 7 (Supplement)

BRITISH PEERS AND THEIR RIGHTS.

'A FTER tho recent trial of Lord de Clifford by the House of Lords on a charge of manslaughter, arising out of the death of a man in a motor accident in which Lord de Clifford was involved, the House of Lords, by 45 votes to 24, abolished the privilege by which peers could be tried for felony only by their peers. In future any peers charged with felony will be brought before the ordinary courts, and the country will not be put to the expense of a spectacular trial by the House of Lords. It is only charts of felony or treason against peers that were heard by members of the House of Lords, sitting as a court of justice. Peers guilty of misdemeanours have in the past been brought before police courts and criminal courts. As recentlv is May, 1935, the Duke of Manchester was tried at the Old Bailey (i.e., the Central Cinmnal Court) on a charge of bavin"obtained sums of £400 and £250 by pawning jewellery, consisting of heirlooms, in trust, which he represented belonged to him. He was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, but the convictioD was quashed by the Court of Appeal. Peers still possess many privileges most of which date back hundreds ° of jeais. Ihey are not liable to serve on juries, and they are entitled to sit in courts of justice with their heads covered. But they cannot be elected as members of the House of Commons, and they have no vote in any constituency of that Chamber.

Two peers, Lord Kingsale and Lord Forester, have the right to stand covered in tlie presence of the Sovereign. Writ-* ing on this privilege, Dr. George C. Williamson states in his book, "Curious f s ""'. 1 ™ 1 ®" ; —"Lord Forester's ancestor, William Forester, a commoner of Watling Street, Shropshire, received the privilege from Henry VIII., but the right that belongs to Lord Kingsale is far earlier. Seven hundred years a«o Philip of France summoned King John to mortal combat. The King was not disposed to accept the challenge, and lie offered de Courcy, Lord Kingsale, freedom from imprisonment, which at that time he was undergoing, if he would undertake the commission on the Kind's behalf. De Courcy was an exceedingly tall man, a magnificent soldier, very brave, and well known for his prowess, and when the French champion saw him' he declined the encounter. De Courcv heard, it is said, from the lips of the King his reward in these words: "Thou art a pleasant companion, and heaven keep thee in good health. Never unveil thy bonnet again before King or subject." The descendants of this famous Lord Kingsale have jealously guarded the privilege, and have even, at times, contested the point with the Sovereign! No peer conies to the House of Lords •with gloves on when the King is present. He appears unarmed before his Sovereign, and in order to show that he carries no concealed weapon, his hands are bare.

It was generally believed that every peer had the right to attend the coronation of the King. The matter was investigated in connection with the coronation of King Edward VII., and it was found that no such right existed, and that, although the Sovereign had certainly been in the habit of requiring the attendance of the peers at his coronation he aould summon whom he liked, and send 110 invitation to any peer whom he wished to exclude.

Procedure in the Lords. Members of the House of Commons when taking part in a debate nominally address Mr. Speaker; but members of the House of Lords do not address the Lord Chancellor, who sits on the Woolsack, and presides over the debates. They address the House. The Woolsack, a big red-covered settee, stuffed with woof, emblematic of the staple trade of England in medieval times, is technically considered as outside the House. If the

Some Peculiar Privileges.

A GROWTH OP THE CENTURIES.

Lord Chancellor desires to speak, he moves several paces to the left, and is then regarded as being within the boundaries of the House, where he speaks just as an ordinary peer, and not as the mouth of the House. He has no authority to rule a poor out of order; he cannot decide which peer is to be heard before any .other peer; and he cannot prefer one peer before another. All the peers of the House, whatever may be their rank, are regarded as being equal; each has a right to speak when he wishes do so, and the House only can determine who is to be heard first. There is no one to speak in its name, and its proceedings cannot be adjourned without the consent of the entire House; and such consent must be taken before a sitting is brought to an end. The roll of the House of Lords, on which the names of tho peers appear in order of precedence, is an actual roll, which is wound round a roller. It is a long strip of parchment about sixteen inches wide. The Royal Princes are named at the head of it; then follow the names of the Archbishop of Canterbury, tho Lord High Chancellor, the Archbishop of York, the Lord President of the Council and- the Lord Privy Seal. Then come the peers in their rightful precedence, the dukes first, the marquesses next, the earls, headed by the Master of the Horse; the viscounts, headed by the Lord Steward of the Royal Household, and the Lord Chamberlain of the Royal Household, and finally the bishops and the barons.

For each new Parliament a new roll of the House of Lords is prepared, and is solemnly delivered to the Clerk of the House by Garter King at Arms, who comes into the House wearing his

tabard. At the same time the certificate regarding the election of the Scottish peers to the House is also presented. There is no roll in the House of Commons; the list to which the members sign their names is contained in a book. " A curious privilege of the peer," states Mr. A. S. Tuberville in his book, " The House of Lords in the Eighteenth Century," "is the right of access to the Sovereign, for the purpose of tendering advice on public affairs." When Fox's India Bill of 1783 was before Parliament, the second Earl Temple, subsequently first Marquis of Buckingham,

though in opposition, had an audience of George 111. at which a scheme for the defeat of the measure, which was equally obnoxious to the King and the Opposition, was devised. Temple defended his action in the House of Lords, and contended that it was the privilege of. peers as the hereditary counsellors of the Crown, either individually or collectively, to advise the Crown.

Another privilege possessed by the House of Lords to which Mr. Tuberville refers was that of " protesting." This was the privilege of a minority. They were entitled to enter in the pages of the Journals of the House a protest against any decision of the House, giving their reasons for disagreeing with it. and appending their signatures. "This system," states Mr. Tuberville, "has led to the curious result that the Journals of the House tell us more about the views of _ minorities than those held by majorities; of the latter we know only their conclusions, of the former not only their opinions, but their arguments. By long standing usage the right was restricted to those who had actually voted on the question to which the protest referred." But this right of protest was not of much value, for if the majority took exception to the arguments used by the portesters they coul.l order them to be expunged from the pages of the Journals. This was occasionally done. The last time the priviprotesting was exercised was in 18/4.

Spiritual Peers. Only 24 of the 30 bishops in England have the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords. The Bishop of Sodor and Man has an honorary seat in the House, without the right to vote or join in the debates. The other 11 bishops, who are excluded from the House, await in the order of seniority of their appointments for vacancies among the Spiritual Peers of the House. When a vacancy occurs through death the cleric appointed as bishop to the vacant see takes his place at the bottom of the list of those awaiting the writ of summons to the House of Lords, and the bishop at the head of the list joins the spiritual peers in the House. But the Bishops of London, Durham and Winchester are not placed on the waiting list when appointed to their sees. These three bishoprics are entitled to permanent representation in the House of Lords. The wife of a bishop shares none of the ancient privileges of her husband. In the days when these privileges were granted the bishops were celibates, and the House of Lords still regards bishops as unmarried. "The law does not recognise the existence of a bishop's wife," states Dr. George C. Williamson in "Curious Survivals-" "She is really not supposed to exist. She cannot be mada ,

the recipient of any of her husband's dignities. If a bishop were to be knighted his wife cannot claim to be called 'My Lady.' This is actually the case at the present day, as the Archbishop of Canterbury holds u dignity equivalent to a knighthood, although no ecclesiastic really receives the accolade, but tiie Archbishop's wife does not take any dignity from her husband's knighthood, and, in fact, is not supposed even to exist. She has no precedence, and at table, when the Archbishop of Canterbury formally entertains the Sovereign, his wife occupies a subordinate position."

A Peer Hanged. One of the privileges of peers which is seldom exercised is the right to be hanged by a silken cord if sentenced to death for murder. The last peer to be hanged was the fourth Earl Ferrers, who was executed at Tyburn on May 5, 1760. He was a man of ungovernable temper, any on many occasions had violently assaulted the servants at his ancestral home, Staunton Harold, in Leicestershire. He treated his wife so cruelly that she obtained a separation,from him by Act of Parliament, and Mr. Johnson, land steward of the Ferrers estate, who had been brought up in the service of the family, was appointed receiver of the rents to be appropriated for the use of Countess Ferrers. This led to disputes between the earl and Johnson, and in a tit of rage the earl shot Johnson fatally with a pistol. He was tried by his peers of the House of Lords, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He put forward the plea of insanity, and called his two brothers as witnesses to testify that there had been insanity in the family for several generations; but he displayed so much ability in conducting his defence that the peers decided he was sane.

The procession from the Tower of London, where Earl Ferrers was imprisoned, to Tyburn, on the day of execution, was an imposing spectacle. The doomed man, who chatted cheerfully to the hangman and his assistant, but gave little attention to the exhortations of the clergyman, wore a grey suit richly embroidered with silver, which, he said, was his wedding suit. He sat in his own landau drawn by six horses, which I was preceded by a detachment of horee j grenadiers and a detachment of foot soldiers, and the sheriff in his chariot In the rear of the procession were a coach and six, conveying relatives and friends, and also a hearse drawn by six horses, to take away the body for burial. The execution of Lord Ferrers is the "drop" by the hangman. Previously the condemned man stood up in a cart while the hangman fixed the rope; the cart was then driven away, and the man was left to swing and die by strangulation. Death took place slowly as a rule, and sometimes the dying man's friends hastened the end by seizing his legs and

hanging on to them. The object of the "drop" is to ensure instantaneous death by breaking the neck. Horace Walpole, in a letter to liiis friend George Montagu, thus describes the execution of Earl Ferrers. "Under the gallows was a new invented stage, to be struck from under him. As the machine was new, they were not ready at it, and he suffered a little, having had time by their bungling to raise his cap, but the executioners pulled it down again, and they pulled his legs so that lie was soon out of pain and quite dead in four minutes." Walpole adds that "the executioners fought for the rope, and the one that lost It cried." The rope by which a man had been hanged was supposed to bring luck, and it was customary for the hangman to sell pieces of it to superstitious purchasers. Walpole docs not say that a silken rope was used, and the omission is regarded as evidence that Karl Ferrers was hanged with an ordinary rope, though tradition says the doomed man provided a silken one.