REGARD FOR TRADITION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19503, 9 December 1937, Page 10

REGARD FOR TRADITION

OPENING OF PARLIAMENT YEOMEN 00 INTO CELLARS LONDON, Oct. 27. With punctilious regard for tradition, 10 stout Yeomen of the Guard in their picturesque scarlet uniforms and garlanded Tudor hats poked through the cellars of the Houses of Parliament yesterday morning and made certain that no modern Guy Fawkes was ready to blow up King George VI and his brilliant assemblage of peers, peeresses and "members of the faithful Commons." Half an hour before the King came to open Parliament, the Yeomen, carrying lanterns and halberds, moved off through the empty Upper Chamber, where two thrones stood ready for the King and Queen. They passed into the House of Commons and pausjo by the Speaker's chair. There a trapdoor was opened and the Yeomen, moving gingerly, backed down a steep flight of iron steps into the low-roofed cellar below the Commons. Around the gratings, the "Beef-eaters" peered dutifully into a sub-cellar and then probed irito ventilator spaces. Down two more flights the searchers came across the fresh air intake of the Commons in a spotless, welllighted room, where not even a spider or a mouse could have concealed itself. The Yeomen crept cautiously through a long, vaulted corridor and took a look at the air shaft which b'ows the smell of cooking from the Parliamentary kitchen to the top of the Victoria tower.

At last the Yeomen came to the large, low chamber beneath the House of Lords in which Guy Fawkes was surprised, with his barrels of gunpowder, on one November midnight in 1605. The Yeomen pushed their sticks into obviously empty corners, peeked behind pillars and studied the ceiling. Then they passed up a short ladder and came to a space directly under the King's Throne. Everything was in order. With a sigh, the Yeomen filed into the courtyard.