1

INTRODUCTION: CHAMBER, MEMBERS, DEBATES

House chamber

The House of Lords was still a powerhouse in the nineteenth century, forum of prime ministers and members of Cabinet, orators and spokesmen. Of the ten Prime Ministers during Victoria’s reign, five ruled exclusively from the House of Lords, while two more sat there for part of their term of office. On three occasions, the leaders of both the government and the opposition were in the House of Lords. Since the House’s consent was necessary for any bill to become law, its debates and decisions were reported at length in newspapers. They provoked reactions ranging from impassioned letters to the editor, to petitions, mass meetings, and violent demonstrations.

The aristocratic, unelected nature of the House of Lords became increasingly divisive as the century wore on and the political aspirations of a wider class developed. To conservatives it was an assembly of the nation’s natural leaders, those with a stake in the country, superior in upbringing, cultured, and intelligent. Thus it remained an esteemed and indeed essential part of the constitution, whose role was to defeat or amend the hasty legislation of Commons demagogues, and to safeguard the traditional institutions that had served Britain so well. But to reformers, it was the special-interest club of the large landowners (equivalent to the modern 1%), who routinely frustrated the will of the elected majority in order to maintain their anachronistic privileges. It needed to be curbed if not completely abolished.

Obviously the reformers’ view prevailed in the end, and political power was gradually transferred to the House of Commons. Shortly after the Victorian period the House of Lords lost its permanent veto on legislation, and at present most of its seats are neither inherited nor held by landowners. But these developments were incubated in the nineteenth century, and form an important part of its history. The Lords--Commons relationship forms part of the subtext of every major piece of Victorian legislation, influencing tactics and substance. The changing British constitution was shaped partly by the Lords’ formulations of their role, and reactions to it. This vital history will be outlined in more detail in Part 5. As background, the present Part 1 provides an overview of how the House was made up and what its debates were like. Parts 2 to 4 study examples of those who sat in it: prime ministers, cabinet ministers, and former members of the Commons, to give a sense of its living reality.

THE CHAMBER

In 1834 a huge fire began in the furnaces underneath the House of Lords. It rapidly consumed the chamber and much of the rest of the Palace of Westminster. Between 1835 and 1847, the Lords sat in the re-roofed and repaired Painted Chamber. But in 1847 a splendid new House of Lords, designed by Pugin, was opened in a rebuilt parliament. I will use the past tense to describe Victorian conditions, but substantially (except for bomb damage of the stained-glass windows) this is still in use today.

At the head of the chamber was a canopied throne, occupied by the monarch at the opening of Parliament—an event to which members of the House of Commons were summoned. In front of this was the Woolsack, a large red-covered cushion which was the Lord Chancellor’s seat when the House was in session. Members sat on the other three sides of the central aisle, on tiers of benches whose red upholstery provided a regal contrast with the Commons’ green. To the immediate right of the throne were bishops and archbishops. The supporters of the governing party sat further down on the right, opposite a clerks’ table which papers could “lie upon.” Cabinet members who were lords occupied the front row, called the Treasury Bench, and less committed supporters sat below a central gangway. The opposition sat on the left. Peers, though unelected, generally supported one party or another, whether from conviction, family tradition, or their having been MPs. But at the end of the chamber were the aptly-named cross-benches, for the unaffiliated. These have no counterpart in the House of Commons, and suggest a slightly less partisan organization. The Earl of Dunraven in a bantering exchange over “the cross-bench mind” called it “large, liberal, and expansive,” though its quarters were cramped1. Ex-prime ministers, if lords, usually occupied the first seat in the front row below the gangway.

The House was surrounded by a gallery for spectators. For significant debates, those who crowded here would include members of parliament and the wives and family of peers. Peeresses could be seen in all their glory, unlike the women spectators in the House of Commons, who were sequestered behind an iron grille. The heirs apparent of peers and privy councillors were allowed to sit on the steps of the throne. One unfortunate feature of the new chamber was its atrocious acoustics; the splendid high vault swallowed all but the most robust words. As a result, these visitors, along with the newspaper reporters, and after 1877 Hansard scribes, were truly spectators rather than auditors—and speeches reported in the morning papers (unless the speaker had sent in a written copy) often owed much to editorial assistance, improvements, and guesswork.

MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE
Lords Temporal: Peers

True to its name, the House was composed mostly of lords, the peers who were heads of the titled families discussed in Part 1: barons, viscounts, earls, marquises, and dukes, including the whole peerages of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, and representatives of the ancient peerages of Scotland and Ireland.

16 Scottish Representative Peers
In the Middle Ages Scotland was an independent kingdom. It has its own peers, who sat in one unified parliament along with commoners. When Elizabeth I of England died in 1603, the throne of England passed to her relative James, who was already James VI of Scotland. This event was known as “the union of the crowns,” to be distinguished from political union. Scotland continued to have its own parliament, legal system, and church. For just over a century, the monarch of the two countries was free to give Scottish peers and gentry an English peerage and seat in the House of Lords, or to make Englishmen peers in the Scottish peerage, sitting in the Scottish parliament.

But in 1707, a “union of parliaments” was hammered out whereby the two countries were united to become “Great Britain.” The Scots ceased to have their own legislature, but sent 54 MPs to the House of Commons, and 16 “representative peers” to the House of Lords. These were elected by the 154 remaining members of the peerage of Scotland, in lively gatherings often punctuated by long, unwanted tirades from the Marquess of Queensbury.2 (These elections and their Irish counterparts almost invariably produced Conservative supporters.) Thereafter there were no more additions to the Scottish peerage; Scots and Englishmen alike were appointed to the new peerage of Great Britain.

28 Irish Representative Peers

Ireland had been subject to the English crown since 1175, but had its own parliament and its own peers, who sat in an Irish House of Lords. However, these peers were not necessarily truly Irish, as the English monarch had the right to name them. James I, finding 25 Irish peers on his accession, appointed 14 new ones between 1616 and 1619, including 3 Englishmen and 4 Scots.3 Between 1621 and 1630, another 61 were created, only 20 of them Irish, thus swamping the natives. The motive was sometimes to give an Englishman a prestigious “handle to his name” without his sitting in the English House of Lords, but it was also a way of fortifying the notorious Protestant Ascendency.

By the Act of Union of 1800 (effective 1801), Great Britain became “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,” and Ireland lost its parliament. The Irish were allowed 100 MPs, and 28 representatives of the old Irish peerage in the House of Lords. Unlike their Scottish counterparts, who were elected anew for each parliament, once elected they were a representative peer for life. Furthermore, if not selected, they could sit in the House of Commons for a British (but not Irish) constituency. Thus Lord Palmerston, inveterate member of the House of Commons, was actually an Irish Viscount.

Up to 1898, a new Irish peerage was still created occasionally to honour people without catapulting them into the House of Lords. However, new peerages for Irish men after 1800 were generally in the newly-named peerage of the United Kingdom. It’s important to note, then, that there were more Irish and Scottish men in the House of Lords than just the representative peers. In 1884, for example, 84 members of the Irish peerage sat by virtue of also being in the peerage of England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom.4 The Duke of Buccleuch, who was also Duke of Queensbury and Scotland’s largest landowner, sat under his English title of Earl of Doncaster and so was not listed with the dukes in division lists in spite of his status.

Attendance of Peers

It is surprisingly difficult to count the exact number of peers at any one time, given conflicting sources, the presence of ecclesiastics and only representative Scottish and Irish peers in Parliamentary lists and of peeresses and royal dukes in others, the fact that the Irish and Scottish peers often had two separate titles and appeared in two lists, and so on. One who has crunched the numbers is J.V. Beckett. In the appendix to his The Aristocracy in England he gives charts of probable figures at 10-year intervals. In 1840 there were 383 (excluding peeresses) in the three English orders, 83 in the Scottish (but only 46 without an English title), and 204 in the Irish (129 of whom had only an Irish title); adding these together without the duplicates gives us 558 male peers in the whole kingdom. The House of Lords contingent would be 383 plus 44 representatives, or 427. By 1890 the corresponding figures for the peerages are 483, 86 (38 Scottish only), and 177 (91 Irish only), totalling 698 individuals, of whom 527 could sit in the House of Lords.

More interesting, perhaps, is the question of how many of these peers regularly attended Parliament. Many lords, whether they inherited their title or had been ennobled during their lifetime, valued their peerage more for its social status than for its political power. Salisbury even argued that it was a good thing that “only a small fraction of us are devoted politicians,” as this allowed them to tolerate the supremacy of the House of Commons in certain areas.5 Besides, the seating was somewhat limited: the capacity is generally said to be less than 400.6 As Viscount Samuel remarked in a 1950s symposium, “we should be grateful to those who grace the meetings of this House by their absence,”7 or the institution would grind to a halt.

Another consideration was the cost of London life. Those who had a substantial London house as well as a country estate were best positioned to attend Parliament regularly. Those who lived in distant parts of the kingdom might attend the opening of Parliament, and show up when summoned by the party whip for an important vote, but were less keen to travel up to London to debate the Ecclesiastical Courts Consolidation Bill. As in the House of Commons, they could “pair” with a member of another persuasion and both abstain. Their absence was further facilitated, until 1868, by allowing them to stay at home and vote by proxy. Such “country peers” were sometimes a bone of contention or derision, as seen in the discussion of the Third Reform Bill. Rosebery remarked that the Duke of Argyll had pictured them as keeping abreast of contemporary affairs, “studying politics in rural retirement, surrounded by an attached peasantry, and when the tocsin sounded, hurrying from these rustic retreats, redolent of the library and the hayfield, ready to confirm any decision which might be arrived at by the Front Opposition Bench.” The populace, he felt, might not appreciate the decision of this bloated and unnatural House of Lords.8

At the worst, we hear descriptions of an almost empty House with its quorum of three, one lord droning on and the other two asleep.9 But the lists in the Journals of the House of Lords normally show a respectable number of attendees (though not all would have been present for the whole sitting: many left for dinner at 8 and did not reappear till most of the debate was over). For Victoria’s first new Parliament in November 1837, 230 lords took the oath of allegiance in the first five days, out of 334 listed in the Roll of Lords in Hansard (excluding royal dukes and ecclesiastics). My random sampling in the next few weeks ranged from 21 to 147 present. John Hogan10 suggests there were about 70 active politicians in the House at mid-century --equivalent to today’s small minority of “working peers.” Absenteeism had become more concerning towards 1900; in 1897 only 18 members spoke.11

For important debates, however, almost everyone who could showed up. For the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws—laws so dear to the landed aristocracy—251 lords and 19 bishops attended the vote for second reading on 28 May. This actually topped the second reading of the Third Reform Bill of 1884: “a packed house,” said The Times, but consisting of 204 lords from around 500 eligible. I have found Ireland (or is it Gladstone?) to be the greatest magnet. For the second reading of Gladstone’s Irish Church Disestablishment Bill in 1869, 369 were present, including three archbishops (one Irish), 21 bishops, and 16 dukes. This was exceeded only by the defeat of Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule Bill in 1893 by 419 votes to 41, giving 460 votes and actually 470 attendees out of a possible 556.

26 or 30 Lords Spiritual: Archbishops and Bishops

From its earliest days the King’s Council that was the kernel of the House of Lords had included important ecclesiastics, such as archbishops, bishops, and abbots. Abbots disappeared with Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, leaving the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester, and 21 other bishops—a total of 26 for England and Wales which was not exceeded even with the creation of new sees. In addition, until its disestablishment in 1869, the United Church of England and Ireland contributed the Archbishop of Dublin and three other bishops by rotation. These ecclesiastics are considered to be not peers, but Lords of Parliament, and are known collectively as the Bench of Bishops.

Because of the bishops’ presence in the House of Lords, their appointment was always a political act. Trollope opens Barchester Towers at the deathbed of the Bishop of Barchester, which his son Archdeacon Grantley watches over with guilty thoughts: will his father die before the present tottering ministry falls---one which seems to favour Grantley as the next bishop---or will he linger on until the opposition takes office and appoints somebody else? Unfortunately, it’s the latter, by a hair.

Appointments were made by the monarch, as Supreme Head of the Church, on the advice of the prime minister. Oddly, it was the prime minister who has the final say. Queen Victoria, however, did not rubber-stamp any candidates. She had decided views on the needs of the church, was well-informed, and often threw herself into battle for her favoured cleric. In fact church historian Owen Chadwick is enthusiastic about her influence, praising her non-political standards and calling her “a kind of jury, of perfect integrity,” whose vigilance helped to produce “a bench of bishops more eminent in wisdom, learning, personality and holiness of life, than the Church of England had hitherto seen12.”

The prime minister would consider several factors besides a candidate’s formal qualifications in his choices. He was naturally aware of whether a potential bishop would vote for his party in the Lords. He might want to correct an imbalance between the High, the Broad, and the Low factions of the Church—that is, the Ritualists, the Rationalists (Rits vs. Rats to Disraeli), and the Evangelicals; or to please their parishioners. His personal leanings also played a role. Lord John Russell’s appointments were mainly of the Broad Church wing favoured by Victoria, whereas Palmerston, advised by his devout stepson-in-law Shaftesbury, favoured evangelicals. Disraeli, caring not a whit for theology, made exclusively political appointments. His polar opposite Gladstone, somewhat of a religious fanatic, slightly favoured High Church candidates, and actually ranked “Liberal sentiments” only sixteenth of 17 qualifications. Both were often outmanoeuvred by the Queen.13

The ecclesiastics in the Lords were generally conservative. They had excited popular rage when 21 of them helped to defeat the October 1831 version of the First Reform Bill: effigies of bishops were thrown on the bonfires of that Guy Fawkes Day. The only bishop to support the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869 was the learned and liberal Bishop of St. David’s, Connop Thirlwall. In opposing this and other liberal measures, many seemed haunted by the spectre of “atheism and infidelity, dissent and discord,”14 stemming from memories of the French Revolution and its persecution of the church. It was a sacred duty to resist the excesses of democracy, to uphold the church, and to fulfill the state’s responsibility to provide for the religious instruction of the populace. Conscience forbade concessions to radicals, Catholics, Dissenters, or secularists.

Later, Gladstone complained “that the Tory bishops vote without scruple against us in the Lords—that the Liberal bishops hardly ever vote with us.”15 He did, however, manage to rally their support for his Third Reform Bill: the Archbishop of Canterbury, declaring that the church should help to elevate the lower class16, led 12 ecclesiastics to vote in its favour, with only two against. At other times they were perhaps heeding the advice of Prince Albert, that a bishop “ought to abstain completely from mixing himself up with the politics of the day,” but should “come forward whenever the interests of humanity are at stake.”17 These would include conditions of life and labour, as well as all legislation affecting religion.

3 Law Lords (after 1876)

The nineteenth-century House of Lords had two functions in the legal system. The first concerned disputes relating to the peerage, such as the right to inherit a title, the election of representative peers, and whether a peerage was in abeyance, as well as the trial of peers for felonies or treason. The climax in Dorothy Sayers’ Clouds of Witness has Peter Wimsey’s brother the Duke of Denver facing a murder trial in the Lords, the Lord High Steward presiding as the gowned peers enter “two by two, in their order, beginning with the youngest baron.” The second sphere of legal activity was more general: the House was the supreme court of appeal, and the Lord Chancellor was the chief legal officer of the kingdom. Unfortunately, he also presided over the Court of Chancery and debates in the House of Lords, and was a member of Cabinet; so he was hard pressed. And he could expect little help from the other “lay” peers. The Attorney-General in 1850, Sir R. Bethell, complained that “judicial business was conducted before the Supreme Court of Appeal in a manner which would disgrace the lowest court of justice in the kingdom.”18

Apparently there was a shortage of legal expertise among the aristocracy. Samuel Smiles in Self-Help notes that the successful lawyers he holds up as examples “were, for the most part, the sons of attorneys, grocers, clergymen, merchants, and hardworking members of the middle class.”19 Lord St. Leonards’ father was a perfumier and hairdresser, and Lord Eldon was the son of a coal-loader. These two had been ennobled in order to become Lord Chancellor. But many prominent lawyers or judges declined to join the nobility, because they lacked the wealth and estates to allow their descendants to keep up the dignity of an hereditary peerage. The obvious solution was to make some legal experts peers for life only. On Bethell’s suggestion Palmerston recommended the eminent judge Sir James Parke, and in January 1856 Queen Victoria made him Lord Wensleydale for life. But the House of Lords objected: the Queen had the right to confer any honour she pleased, but the House alone could decide who could sit and vote in it. Fearing that the temporary introduction of “persons of merit from all classes” would swamp their order, dilute the hereditary principle, and perhaps even lead to a call for the election of House of Lords members—in which case how long would the monarchy survive?20 --they denied Wensleydale that right. Great numbers of lords attended debates on this question. Eventually he was made a regular baron.

Twenty years later, however, the Appelate Jurisdiction Act of 1876 did allow for the creation of three Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (“law lords”) at the rank of barons for life. Until 1958 they were the only life peers. Of the 54 law lords appointed until 1911, according to Ralph Plumphrey, 20 were from commercial or professional backgrounds rather than the gentry.21 Because of this addition of expertise, the regular or “lay lords” abstained from voting on legal appeals.

Named officials
Great Officers of State

The origin of the House of Lords in the king’s personal council left its mark in eight “Great Officers of State,” who continued to be appointed though they were no longer literally “Lords of the Bedchamber.” Three of them—the Lord Chancellor, Lord President of the Council, and Lord Privy Seal—were important political posts with a seat in Cabinet [see part 3]. The others were of a ceremonial nature. The Lord High Steward, first in rank, came into office only for a coronation or the trial of a peer. The Lord High Treasurer’s duties had been transferred to a commission of Treasury Lords. The Great Lord Chamberlain, an inherited post, was responsible for the running of the Palace of Westminster (i.e. the Parliament buildings—not to be confused with Buckingham Palace). The Lord High Constable was called out of abeyance for coronations. The Earl Marshal, hereditary with the Dukes of Norfolk, had jurisdiction over the College of Arms and peerage questions, besides ceremonial roles. These still exist today.

Lords In Waiting

Peers also provided about a dozen attendants for the monarch, to escort him or her on royal duties, dance at royal balls, greet visitors, and socialize at court functions. Until 1782, the three chief Lords in Waiting had a seat in Cabinet. The Lord Chamberlain (to be distinguished from the Great Lord Chamberlain above) was responsible for the ceremonial and social life of the court, as well as licensing plays. The Lord Steward (not to be confused with the Lord High Steward) was responsible for the housekeeping or “below stairs” aspect of the palaces, including food and finances. The Master of the Horse has a non-confusing title. These were important patronage appointments for the governing party, providing both prestige and a salary; in return, those chosen were expected to be in regular attendance at the House of Lords and to vote for the party.

Queen Victoria required Ladies in Waiting to attend her personally, as well as male household administrators. When she came to the throne, the ladies she appointed were generally the wives of peers in Melbourne’s government or from prominent Whig families, such as the Duchess of Bedford, married to Lord John Russell’s brother, and the Baroness Lyttleton, born a Spencer. Her refusal to change even one of them when the Tory Robert Peel was asked to form a government—the famous “Bedchamber Crisis” of May 1839—is not strictly part of the history of the House of Lords. But it does indicate the importance of these arcane positions.

Party Whips

At least from the 1840s, the government would appoint a Lords Chief Whip who was also given a position in the royal household, such as Master of the Buckhounds or Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard (a different group from the Yeomen Warders at the Tower of London.) The opposition also had its Lords Whip. These peers were vital in managing the party’s votes, keeping lists of proxies and pairs and summoning members, besides raising funds and garnering information.

PROCEDURE AND CHARACTER OF DEBATES

An immense amount of legislation passed through the House of Lords. According to its Journals, each session began with a plethora of local bills---to repair the road from Romney to Wallop, build a railway between Frome and Weymouth, clean up the river Nene, guard against involuntary “melancholy seclusion” in a local nunnery---all of which were referred to a committee. Lords presented and tabled numerous petitions. Sometimes they heard legal cases or followed the sordid details of applications for divorce. Finally there were the public bills, of which alone the debates are recorded in Hansard.

For a public bill to become law, it needed the consent of both Houses. Sometimes a bill actually originated in the House of Lords, when the relevant minister was a peer. But usually it was introduced in the House of Commons, and if passed there, was sent to the House of Lords, often late in the session. The Lords could defeat it instantly, unless it was a supply bill, by voting against giving it a second reading (moving that it “be read this day 6 months” when Parliament would not be sitting), and that would be the end of it. Or they could accept it in principle by voting for its second reading, and go into a “committee of the whole” to discuss it clause by clause under the Chairman of Committees, with looser rules of procedure. Then it was sometimes accepted, given third reading, and be ready to become law.

But at the committee stage it was also possible to suggest changes, sometimes minor but sometimes defeating the purpose of the bill. In this case the amended bill was sent back to the Commons. If the amendments proved unacceptable, the Lords might give up their changes and vote reluctantly for the original bill. Or there could be negotiations between members of both Houses in order to reach a compromise. The final entry in Hansard for the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill illustrates what a long and rocky road this could be: “Returned from the Commons, with the amendments made by the Lords to the amendments made by the Commons to the amendments made by the Lords, and the consequential amendment, agreed to; and the amendments made by the Lords to which the Commons had disagreed and on which the Lords have insisted, agreed to.”22 But if both sides were less agreeable and stood firm, the bill would fail.

Each House followed closely the proceedings of the other. Usually they upheld the convention that they could neither know nor quote what had been said in the other House, apart from what had been formally communicated to them in a message—even though they may have witnessed the speech in person from the galleries. (They do sometimes quote Hansard without exciting comment.) They distanced themselves even further by referring to the other House only obliquely, as “another place.” But any step taken in one place was evaluated partly in terms of the reaction it might provoke in that other.

Discussion in the House of Lords could range from dull to dazzling—the average perhaps tending to the former. After all, the chamber was somewhat homogeneous, with little representation of the middle or lower classes. And its members were often aged men: peers did not inherit till the death of their fathers, and sat for life. According to Salisbury, “a Quaker jollification, a French horse-race, a Presbyterian Psalm, all are lively and exciting compared to an ordinary debate in the House of Lords.”23

But even this subdued atmosphere might be considered an improvement over the uproar in the House of Commons. Debates there could be incredibly rowdy, with members “around and about, overhead in the galleries, on the floor, lying at full length on the benches, talking, laughing, hooting, coughing, sleeping.”24 Macaulay called the proceedings a cacophony of “beastly bellowings.”25 Disraeli’s maiden speech was drowned out by hisses and catcalls, and he and his cabal later returned the favour by howling down Peel’s self-explanation regarding the Corn Laws “with shouts of derision and gestures of contempt.”26 Speakers persisted through the uproar because they were often not addressing their fellow parliamentarians so much as their constituents, looking forward to seeing their speech in the newspaper, and therefore tiresomely repeating points already made by others.

The Lords’ debates were more sedate. Though they were presided over by the Lord Chancellor, he was not a Commons-style Speaker. He did not call upon members; rather, they policed themselves and were usually conciliatory if, for instance, two rose at once. Eschewing names, they referred to each other by such titles as “the noble Marquess” or “the noble Lord who has just sat down,” varied by “the noble and gallant Lord” (military), or “the noble and learned Lord” (judicial). If they went on too long or were too boring, a motion could suggest “that the noble Lord be no longer heard.” They generally sat, and voted, according to their precedence—sometimes in reverse, but equally according to protocol.

Politeness generally prevailed, but was sometimes strained, as suggested by the Earl of Clancarty’s testy reply when brought to order by the Duke of Wellington for not sticking to the topic: “I had, in fact, nearly arrived at the conclusion, when the noble Duke interfered.”27 Their standing orders encouraged a mannerly debate. One of the best-known (on the books since 1626) forbids personal remarks, stipulating that “all personal, sharp, or taxing speeches be forborn, and whosoever answereth another man’s speech shall apply his answer to the matter without wrong to the person.” The Marquis of Clanricarde asked the clerk to read that order during a heated debate on the ballot in which the Marquis of Bath complained that the Marquis of Ripon “never rises without showing acrimony and bitterness,” and Earl Granville implied that the Duke of Richmond was a despot.28 Another order, dating from 1670, asks “Lords not to converse whilst the House is upon business.” Frank Dilnot’s description of a debate in 1909 applies also to the Victorian atmosphere: “Now, as always, they adhered to their standard of manners, and though they permitted themselves whispers and occasionally undertoned conversations,” they “sat in their seats, upright, easy, correct—with none of that sprawling which is the affectation of ease in the House of Commons.”29

One characteristic of the speeches that will strike a modern reader is their length—column after column of Hansard. But this was typical of the age, found also in House of Commons speeches and two-hour sermons. Speeches were not to be read, but spoken as a direct address to the assembled lords. The Earl of Winchilsea, whose zeal for Protestantism burned as fiercely in 1845 as it had in 1829 when he fought a duel with the Duke of Wellington over Catholic Emancipation, is apparently regretting the lack of notes that might have helped him recall what he said the day before: “The fact was, that he never wrote his speeches; for, once he did so, and he got into such confusion that he resolved never to do it again, but was determined to let his mouth speak what his heart felt. Sometimes, however, his heart was so full, that his mouth could not give utterance to his sentiments.”30

In their immense detail and knowledge, these speeches show the wide range of expertise in the House. Many members had come up from the House of Commons, where they had gained political experience and perhaps been ministers. Thus Liberal House leader Lord Granville, bucking up despondent lords: “Why, looking around me, when I see your Lordships’ House crowded with representatives of enormous wealth, of great social position, and of eminent services rendered in public and private life,” not to mention galleries full of distinguished spectators, “I venture to say that in this world never was erected a more magnificent platform on which men, by their wisdom, their eloquence, and their knowledge, could influence the opinions of their fellow-men.”31

Learning is enlivened by wit, with classical and other quotations bandied about among these Eton- and Oxford-educated men. Rosebery, for instance, is a master of whimsy and the apt quotation. In 1893 he pictures the Liberal minority among the huge sea of Tory lords in terms of Sidney Smith’s description of a salad:

     Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl.
     And, half suspected, animate the whole.

The Liberal Unionists who obsessively discuss and analyze Gladstone bring to his mind the couplet:

     Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise?
     Who fills the butchers’ shops with large black flies?

At which his opponent Salisbury, who had honed his wit in the Commons, congratulates him on having achieved his aim of speaking for an hour and a quarter without committing himself on anything.32 Adopting another tone during a debate on the Third Reform Bill, Rosebery commiserates with Lord Braburne’s anguish at his “consistent and miserable fate” of having to vote against Her Majesty’s Government, and remarks that he “can only look on the noble Lord’s coronet as a crown of thorns.”33

Salisbury himself was a masterful speaker, addressing the House at length without a single note, in apparently effortless, well-rounded sentences. Earl Derby, a notable joker, can’t resist making fun of the Midlands accent of Lord Granville, who had mentioned paper in which parcels are “wropped.” But Granville responds neatly, if somewhat incomprehensibly to me, questioning the pronunciation of “Derby” and “Darby.”34 (Strangely enough, they were both from the Midlands.)

Speakers could also be fiery or even apocalyptic, especially when religion was involved. Lord Shaftesbury took a heroic last stand against admitting Jews to Parliament: “when they [the House of Commons] summon us to depart from a principle which we hold to be sacred—which we consider to be grounded upon the great truths of the religion we profess—I am ready to encounter any consequences of the indignation of the Commons, nor shall any power on earth, or below it, turn me from the maintenance of that principle to the last hours of my existence.”35

Religion and Ireland seem to be the most incendiary topics, and so the debates on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland are a particularly rich source of this type of Victorian grandiloquence. The Marquis of Bath deplored its disendowment, declaring that “he would vote for Amendments involving a moderate re-endowment, and by those Amendments he would stand, even if by so standing he should bring the walls of that House down about their ears; even if he brought the Constitution of the country to the ground and ruined the fortune of himself and every Member of that Assembly.” The Earl of Leitrim spoke in a similar vein: “Cease the House! Perish England! Rather than the line of honour should be departed from.” The Archbishop of Dublin, Richard Chenevix Trench, was a relatively new member of the House, a master of language, poet, philologist, and founder of the Oxford English Dictionary. He spoke bitterly of the “extinction” of his church, and prophesied that “you will have withdrawn no one ingredient from the ever-seething cauldron of Irish discontent, but will have added fresh ones to it, and kindled into fresh activity the flames which are now smouldering and now blazing beneath it.”36

Spokesmen for the government did their best not to be outdone in this debate, though their cause was less fiery. Lord Clarendon, who had been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the famine, remarked on the anomaly of Protestants worshipping in fine churches, while “crowds of poor Roman Catholics [were] kneeling in the mud outside a miserable hovel of a chapel.” The Duke of Argyll spoke earnestly of their desire “to wipe out the foulest stain upon the name and fame of England—our policy to the Irish people.” When the Commons rejected the Lords’ amendments, Earl Grey’s claim that the government aimed to subject the House of Lords to “humiliation and degradation” caused the Duke of Argyll to lose his cool and call him memorably “the chartered libertine of debate” (thus transgressing the rules of the House). In Lord Shaftesbury’s rather overheated estimation, one of those amendments had provoked more outrage in the country “than any vote that is recorded in the whole history of Parliament.”37 At their most vital, there was nothing the least soporific about these debates. Their significance will be discussed in Part 5.

NOTES