SYMBOLS OF OFFICE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 265, 5 August 1929, Page 10

SYMBOLS OF OFFICE

MINISTERS AND THEIR SEALS Dominion Special Service. London, Juno 13. When Ministers resign office and the new Prime Minister is ready with his new Cabinet, the outgoing Ministers appear before the King in Council and deliver to him the Seals of Office, which are then at a second Council handed by His Majesty to the incoming Ministers. Among these symbols of office the most noteworthy is the Great Seal, held by the Lord Chancellor, and it. is timely to recall that the fines' specimen of the Great Seal ever cut was made by a Yorkshireman —Thomas Simon. He received orders to make the Great Seal in 1648, 1651, 1654, and 1661 —working for Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles 11. That was a period during which the demand for new Great Seals was extraordinarily active. In ordinary times the Great Seal remains unchanged throughout a reign, being replaced only on the death of the monarch or on the occasioij of any change in arms or style, such as occurred on the creation of the Irish Free State, when Mr.' Percy Metcalfe was commissioned to design a new one. After a new Great Seal is made, the old one is solemnly broken up, defaced, or “damasked” by the King in Council striking it a light blow with a hammer,. and is thereafter a perquisite of the Lord Chancellor then In office.

Twice in the past hundred years there have been disputes over who was entitled to it. The first was between Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham on the accession of William IV; ie second in 1859 when a new Great Seal was in course of making at the time Lord Campbell succeeded Lord Chelmsford as Lord Chancellor. On the first occasion William IV had the Great Seal divided in two, each bearing one face, and had each half inserted into a silver salver, giving one to e..eh disp ant. ’ In a letter to Lord Campbell, describing what was done, Lord Lyndhurst said that William IV tossed up to decide which should have the obverse and which the reverse.