"Woolsack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... placed on their proper seats, and the Lord High Steward on the woolsack, the Clerk of the Crown in the Court of Chancery, after making three reverences to the Lord Steward, presented, on his knees, the King's commission; which, after the usual reverences, was placed on the table. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... pomposity, which he rendered as agreeable as possible by the urbanity of his manners. He was a man of a lofty spirit, who believed in his office as something exalted above all other dignities of this earth—less lucrative, of course, than a bishopric or the woolsack, and of a narrower range, but quite as important on a small scale. "The world might get on pretty well without bishops," thought Mr. Stoneham, when he pondered upon these things as he smoked his churchwarden pipe; "but what would ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Anglo-Saxon energy present a rich mine of material to the bookmaker. We are justly proud of our self-made men—of our Chancellors who have risen from the barber's-shop to the Woolsack, of our low-born inventors who have fought their way to scientific recognition, of our merchant princes who have begun life with a capital of one half-crown. The story of the man who has raised himself to eminence by his own exertions, in the face of overwhelming disadvantages and ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... officers are still in existence. On a little stand, near the woolsack, was a sword, with a gold hilt and sheath, and belt ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the Bar in 1843, and went the Oxford Circuit in the strangely-assorted company of G. S. Venables, J. G. Phillimore, and E. V. Kenealy. This proved to be his last stage in the anticipated progress towards the Woolsack. Lord Granville died at the beginning of 1846, and the change which this event produced in Frederick Leveson's position can best be described in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Its most gifted members, and those of the judicial bench, heartily acknowledged the transcendence of his professional qualifications, and the unassuming peacefulness with which he had passed through life. Had he lived to occupy the highest judicial seat—the woolsack—few doubted that, when relieved from the crushing pressure of private practice, he would have displayed qualities befitting so splendid a station, and earned a name worthy of ranking with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... and honouring the King as a sort of lord mayor of the empire, or chief of the board of trade—venerating the Commons, for the acts regulating the export trade—and respecting the Peers, because the Lord Chancellor sits on a woolsack." ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sixpence, for he bid fair to be a judge upon the bench. And happier he who had a shilling, for he was in the high road to be one day upon the woolsack, Lord High Chancellor of England. No one had half a crown, or no one would surely have kept it in his pocket upon such an occasion, for he might have been an archbishop, a king, or what ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... they are not permitted to take their due share of the government of the country, and hold the most important situations. To follow up her ideas, we should have a "teeming" prime minister, and the Lord Chancellor obliged to leave the woolsack to nurse his baby; Miss M forgets that her prayer has been half granted already, for we never yet had a ministry without a certain proportion of old women in it; and we can, therefore dispense ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Lords lose in your Lordship's orations. My fancy transports me! As mute as a mouse, And as fleet as a pigeon, I'm borne to the house Where all those who are Lords, from father to son, 55 Discuss the affairs of all those who are none. I behold you, my Lord! of your feelings quite full, 'Fore the woolsack arise, like a sack full of wool! You rise on each Anti-Grenvillian Member, Short, thick and blustrous, like a day in November![343:1] 60 Short in person, I mean: for the length of your speeches Fame herself, that most ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of his presence was easy. When sometimes she glanced towards him it was with the thought, "Fancy being one of the rising young men at the Bar, being the rising young man—the Bar, with silk and ermine and, why not? the Woolsack before you—and being that, doing that! Fatted calf; dilly, dilly, come and ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... (when he is not afflicted) are judges, counsellors, church dignitaries, from cardinals to curates, scholars, chancellors, barristers, and the highest orders of lawyers, woollendrapers (possibly there may be some astral significance in the woolsack), and clothiers. When Jupiter is afflicted, however, he denotes quacks and mountebanks, knaves, cheats, and drunkards. The influence of the planet on the fortunes is nearly always good. Astrologers, who to a man reverence dignities, consider Great Britain fortunate in that the lady ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... will of the hand that fed and could advance him, no justice which might check the insolence of power. And in less than a month after Mr. Horne was sent to jail, Thurlow was made Lord Chancellor of England, and sat on the woolsack in the House of Lords. His chief panegyrist can only say, "in worse times there have been worse chancellors." "But an age of comparative freedom and refinement has rarely exhibited one who so ill understood, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... he is described to have appeared abashed and pale: he passed the woolsack without looking round, and advanced to the table where the proper officer was attending to administer the oaths. When he had gone through them, the chancellor quitted his seat, and went towards him with a smile, putting out his hand in a friendly manner to welcome him, but he made a stiff bow, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... lived on together after their return from Englebourn, in a set of chambers in the Temple, which one of Tom's college friends (who had been beguiled from the perusal of Stephen's Commentaries and aspirations after the woolsack, by the offer of a place on board a yacht and a cruise to Norway) ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... anything which interrupted its flow. It is agreeable to find that imbecility and terror did not rule unchallenged over the Upper House that day. One account, that of Walpole, who is always malicious, represents Lord Mansfield as sitting upon the woolsack trembling like an aspen. Another, more creditable and more credible, declares that Lord Mansfield showed throughout the utmost composure and presence of mind. About the gallantry of Lord Townshend there can be no doubt. When he heard that Lord Boston ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... old back row of the old gallery in the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep, kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing. Returning home from excited political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I have been, in my time, belated in miry by-roads, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... sensitive, and was too satisfied at having gained his object to cavil at Mark's manner of yielding. 'Very well; that's settled,' he said. 'I'm glad you've come to your senses, I'm sure. We'll have you on the Woolsack yet, and we'll say no ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... certainly never seen in any comedy of intrigue, either at his own play- house, or at the Duke's, than that which this memorable debate produced. The Lord Treasurer spoke with characteristic ardour and intrepidity in defence of the Declaration. When he sat down, the Lord Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, to the amazement of the King and of the House, attacked Clifford, attacked the Declaration for which he had himself spoken in Council, gave up the whole policy of the Cabinet, and declared himself on the side of the House ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... example of a successful ancestor is apt to determine the pursuits of his descendants down to the third and fourth generations, inclining the lads of this house to the sea, and of that to the bar, according as the great man of the family achieved his honors on shipboard, or climbed his way to the woolsack. The Arbuthnots offered no exception to this very natural law of selection. They could not help remembering how the famous doctor had excelled in literature as in medicine; how he had been not only Physician ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... circles of latitude and longitude abroad—to save the possessions of the Church at home. This appears in the speeches in Shakespeare, where the hidden motives that actuate princes and their advisers in war and policy are better laid open than in speeches from the throne or woolsack. Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France. Because he did ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... The Attorney-General was a man of striking and highly intellectual countenance; but he looked, on alighting, somewhat fatigued with his long journey. He was a man of extraordinary natural talents, and also a first-rate lawyer—one whose right to take the woolsack, whenever it should become vacant, was recognized by all the profession. His professional celebrity, and his coming down "special" on the present occasion, added to the circumstance of his being well known to be a ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... there when Jack Sevier is safe and I have won some more land from Mr. Jackson. We'll have a rare old time together, though I have no doubt you can drink me under the table. Beware of these sober men. Egad, Davy, you need only a woolsack to become a full-fledged judge. And now tell me ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... meek, poor sister," quoth Clorinda. "'Tis not a chair of coronation or the woolsack of a judge. Sit! sit!—and let ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... say his peerage was to be as Lord Smith. There it was, SMITH, C., SMITH, C., written in every conceivable fashion, so that the signature, when needed, might be easy and imposing. That man had very vividly anticipated the woolsack, the gold robe, and all the rest. It need hardly be said, he attained none of these. The famous argument, you know of course, is, that man has a great longing to be immortal, and that therefore he is sure to be immortal. Rubbish! It is not true that any longing after immortality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... and alternately on the woolsack of the House and at his wool-stations on the Murrumbidgee. One may squat on a large or small scale, squat directly or indirectly, squat in person or ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... question. "Why will you ask him in terms that he does not comprehend?" said Mr. Johnson, enraged. "You might as well bid him tell you who phlebotomised Romulus. This fellow's dulness is elastic," continued he, "and all we do is but like kicking at a woolsack." ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... muscularity. Thus Lord HALDANE, who in his earlier days thought nothing of walking to Cambridge one day and back to London on the next, has now become more than reconciled to the immobility imposed on the occupant of the Woolsack. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various |
