"Woolsack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind's eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald head, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the men to whom, through life, he had been most adverse, both personally and politically. He little expected in 1820, when he was presiding at Queen Caroline's trial, that he should live to see her Attorney-General on the Woolsack, and her ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... distressful hesitation, followed the difficult 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
... Jupiter (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 whom, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... girl, Betty," said John Scott, pocketing the coin; "and when you find the other you can keep it for your trouble." And the prudent brothers went with a light heart to the play, and so eventually to the Bench and the Woolsack. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... shoulder; perch; horse; easel, desk; clotheshorse, hatrack; retable; teapoy[obs3]. seat, throne, dais; divan, musnud[obs3]; chair, bench, form, stool, sofa, settee, stall; arm chair, easy chair, elbow chair, rocking chair; couch, fauteuil[Fr], woolsack[obs3], ottoman, settle, squab, bench; aparejo[obs3], faldstool[obs3], horn; long chair, long sleeve chair, morris chair; lamba chauki[obs3], lamba kursi[obs3]; saddle, pannel[obs3], pillion; side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Wynston, merrily, "if both are to be fulfilled, or neither, I trust you may never sit upon the woolsack of England." ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was, that he might be able to make an income sufficient for a gentleman to live on. Old Mr. Corbet was hardly to be called ambitious, or, if he were, his ambition was limited to views for the eldest son. But Ralph intended to be a distinguished lawyer, not so much for the vision of the woolsack, which I suppose dances before the imagination of every young lawyer, as for the grand intellectual exercise, and consequent power over mankind, that distinguished lawyers may always possess if they choose. A seat in Parliament, ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he had never written this, but instead had done much else in other ways, according to his powers: that he had written many learned treatises; that he had, with keen criticism, expounded and reconstructed Greek classics; that he had, perchance, sat upon the woolsack, and laid rich offerings at the feet of blind Justice;—taking the years together, would it have been, on the whole, better for him or for us? Would he have added so much to the sum of human happiness? He might thus have made himself a power for a time, to be dethroned by some new usurper ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... explosion of a dynamite bomb two years before, we passed into the Crypt and Committee rooms, and thence through the magnificent corridors decorated with paintings, each of which cost thousands of pounds. The House of Lords was next visited, the Woolsack and Queen's Seat, and the seats of the various members being pointed out to us by the Secretary. From the House of Lords we passed into the House of Commons, where Sir William Harcourt was speaking ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... 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 become ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... gathering. But, as a certain number even of these were always absent on military duty or on other occasions, it was seldom that more than 14 or 15 Peers were present in the House around Lord Grey of Wark on the woolsack as elected Speaker. Sometimes, when the business was merely formal, the number sank to 4 or 5; and I do not think the Lords Journals register, during the whole time with which we are now concerned, a larger attendance than 22. That was the number present ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Vincent Cotton (the ex-driver of the Brighton coach) from Sir Stapleton Cotton (the Peninsular hero) will go for little in such matters; and as for Copley, Lord Lyndhurst (just then promoted from the Rolls to the Woolsack), why not say at once that he attended the nocturnal sittings at ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Banister dining one day with Lord Erskine, the ex-Chancellor, amongst other things, observed that he had then about three thousand head of sheep. "I perceive," interrupted Colman, "your lordship has still an eye to the woolsack." ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... rather than run. With diligence and punctuality, and observance of every chance, in time the wished-for goal is reached, although that goal, in nine cases out of ten, is a very moderate distance off. Lucian did not sigh for a judgeship, or for a seat on the Woolsack; he was content to be a barrister with a good practice, and perhaps a Q.C.-ship in prospect. However, during the year of Diana's mourning he did so well that he felt justified in asking her to marry him when she returned. ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... was considered a chief source of the national wealth. Later, that the fact might be kept constantly in mind, a square crimson bag filled with it—the "Woolsack"—became, and still continues to be, the seat of the Lord Chancellor in ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... 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. A proclamation ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... the same month over the signature of Lord Loreburn. Lord Loreburn had been Lord Chancellor at the time the Home Rule Bill was first introduced, but had retired from the Government in June 1912, being replaced on the Woolsack by Lord Haldane. When the first draft of the Home Rule Bill was under discussion in the Cabinet in preparation for its introduction in the House of Commons, two of the younger Ministers, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill, proposed that an attempt should be made to avert ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... are still in existence. On a little stand, near the woolsack, was a sword, with a gold hilt and sheath, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... some day make one heart very jolly, but a great many more extremely envious, wrathful, and disappointed. So with all other desirable things; so with a large living in the Church; so with aliy place of dignity; so with a seat on the bench; so with the bishopric; so with the woolsack; so with the towers of Lambeth. So with smaller matters; so with a good business in the greengrocery line; so with a well-paying milk-walk; so with a clerk's situation of eighty pounds a year; so with an errand boy's place at three shillings ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... fields. All this, together with a pretty little loving wife for a companion, was, to Tom's notion, something worth living for, and a position he would not exchange for all the gaieties of London life with a seat on the woolsack into ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... WOOLSACK, the seat of the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords, as Speaker of the House, being a large square cushion of wool covered with red cloth, without either back ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Grogram, the great Whig lawyer, showed plainly by his manner that he thought himself at last secure of reaching the reward for which he had been struggling all his life; for it was understood by all men who knew anything that Lord Weazeling was not to be asked again to sit on the Woolsack. No better advocate or effective politician ever lived; but it was supposed that he lacked dignity for the office of first judge in the land. That most of the old lot would come back was ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... disputes, in a fury The sword from the scabbard we draw; But reason appeals to a jury, And settles—according to law. Then hey for the woolsack!—for never Without it can nations be free; But trial by jury for ever! ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... my yellow lion. How was it all? Don't stand, sit right down there on the transom. I'm a democratic sort of sea-king. Plump on the woolsack, I say, and spin the yarn. But hold; you want ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... There were very few persons in the House. Lord Eldon was going through some ordinary business. When Lord Byron entered, I thought he looked still paler than before; and he certainly wore a countenance in which mortification was mingled with, but subdued by, indignation. 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 warmly to welcome him; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the life of a buckeen—passed a month with this relation and that, a year with one patron, a great deal of time at the public-house.(178) Tired of this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given to him for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been a great lawyer or divine. Nothing, one would think, could have kept him from Canterbury or from the Woolsack. In either case his memory, his learning, his dignity, and his inherent sense of piety and justice, would have sent him straight to the top. His brain, working within its own limitations, was remarkable. ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Court? And if he commit himself for contempt of his own Court, can he appear by counsel before himself, to move for arrest of his own judgement? Ah, my Lords, it is indeed painful to have to sit upon a woolsack which is stuffed with such thorns ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... on that trial, and the doctrines from the bench, with the doctrines we have heard from the woolsack, your Committee cannot comprehend how they can be reconciled. For the Lords compelled the Managers to declare for what purpose they produced each separate member of their circumstantial evidence: a thing, as we conceive, not usual, and particularly not observed in the trial ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... heart which warms naturally toward the sex, but he has also a cat-o'-nine-tails, which longs to warm the back of such a Judge, and if he will come down from his woolsack he can both see and feel what that cat-o'-nine-tails is like. Whether she be blue-eyed, or black-eyed, or cross-eyed, makes no difference to PUNCHINELLO, for he is, under all circumstances, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... that these woolpacks were placed in the House of Lords for the judges to sit on, so that the fact that wool was a main source of our national wealth might be kept in the popular mind. The Lord Chancellor's seat is now called the Woolsack.] ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... figure observed walking up the floor of the House of Lords at half-past five on a June evening, was not making for the Throne. Before that piece of furniture stood a bench, in appearance something like the familiar ottoman of the suburban drawing-room. It was the Woolsack, and the svelte figure, swinging towards it with the easy stride of superlative grace and comparative youth, was the LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR! Before him, at respectful distance, went his Purse-bearer, ready to produce the wherewithal should his Lordship desire a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... —Profan'd before—hath church'd the Castle now. Nor is't a common valour we deplore, But such as with fifteen a hundred bore, And lightning-like—not coop'd within a wall— In storms of fire and steel fell on them all. Thou wert no woolsack soldier, nor of those Whose courage lies in winking at their foes, That live at loopholes, and consume their breath On match or pipes, and sometimes peep at death; No, it were sin to number these with thee, But that—thus pois'd—our loss we better see. The fair and open valour was thy shield, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... particular circumstances caused Lord Thurlow's reply to make a deep impression on the Reminiscent. His lordship had spoken too often, and began to be heard with a civil but visible impatience. Under these circumstances he was attacked in the manner we have mentioned. He rose from the woolsack, and advanced slowly to the place from which the chancellor generally addresses the house; then fixing on the duke the look of Jove when he grasps the thunder, 'I am amazed,' he said, in a level tone ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed, in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would seem to have ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... extinguished. 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 those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... called to 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
... After judgment had been briefly given in Gray's case, a few moments' interval of silence elapsed—the silence of suppressed anxiety and expectation. At length the Lord Chancellor, who had been sitting with a very thoughtful air for a few moments, slowly rose from the woolsack, and advanced to his proper post when addressing the House, viz. at about a couple of yards' distance to the left of the woolsack. Finding that his robes, or train, had in some way got inconveniently disarranged, so as to interfere with the freedom of his motions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... course, furnished by our Boy Chancellor. It is an open secret that, with that sagacious foresight which has always characterised him, Lord BIRKENHEAD recognises the impermanency of his exalted position and is resolved when and if he leaves the Woolsack to resume practice as a Junior. It is further rumoured that some of our judges intend to follow his august example. The atmosphere of the Bench is not always exhilarating, and the salary is fixed. But a self-effacing altruism doubtless also ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... modern English. He has read all the new publications, and loves a jest as well as when he jested with the executioner, though we cannot say that the quality of his wit has materially improved in Paradise. His powers of reasoning, too, are by no means in as great vigour as when he sate on the woolsack; and though he boasts that he is "divested of all those passions which cloud the intellects and warp the understandings of men," we think him, we must confess, far less stoical than formerly. As to revelations, he tells Mr. Southey at the outset to expect none from him. The Laureate expresses ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Harem and the Woolsack, it will be necessary to draw the line!"—when they too caught ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... last dilemma faced noble earl. Home Rule Amendment Bill before House in Report stage. MACDONELL moved amendment introducing principle of proportional representation. After long debate Question put from Woolsack. There being a few cries of "Not content!" House cleared ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... 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 restuffing. Returning home from exciting 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. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... whole menagerie to tend. Penelope, according to some school-boy remembrance of mine, had one hundred and eighteen suitors. These young ladies had almost as many. Heavens! I what a crew of Comus to follow or to lead! And what a suitable person was this truculent old lord on the woolsack to enact the part of shepherd—Corydon, suppose, or Alphesibus—to this goodly set of lambs! How he must have admired the hero of the "Odyssey," who in one way or other accounted for all the wooers that "sorned" upon his ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of 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 ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... no mortal man was like their Gerad Mahamed Ali. In leading them to war he was like the English French,[12] and in settling disputes he required no writing office, but, sitting on the woolsack, he listened to the narration of prosecution and defence with his head buried in his hands, and never uttering a word until the trial was over, when he gave his final decision in one word only, ay or nay, without comment of any sort. In confirmation of their statements, they gave the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not say so. He may be a great lawyer,—and very useful. But his lordship, and his wig, and his woolsack, are tinsel in comparison with the real power possessed by the editor of a leading newspaper. If the Lord Chancellor were to go to bed for a month, would he ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... believe, brought him in L10,000 a year, and had he devoted himself to it instead of to politics, would have brought him in far more, and he gave it up for a job immeasurably more burdensome that has never brought him more than L5000. He might have been Lord Chancellor, with a comfortable seat on the Woolsack and L10,000 a year, and he chose instead to sit in the House of Commons every day to be the target of every disappointed placeman. Ah, you say, but look at the glory. Well, look at it. I would, as Danton said, rather keep sheep on the hillside than meddle with the government of men. It is the ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... fonder of ease, more disposed to tranquillity, will settle down with a career that at the very best will only remove him a step above poverty; and shall we dare to say that either is wrong? My brother the Lord Chancellor is a great man, no doubt. The mace is a splendid club, and the woolsack a most luxurious sofa; but as I walk my village rounds of a summer's morning, inhaling perfume of earth and plant, following with my eye the ever-mounting lark, have I not a lighter heart, a freer step, a less wearied head? Have I not risen refreshed from sleep? not nightmared by the cutting ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... morbid mind might desire her, for a blessed change, to sup at last, and turn into bed. Such a mind has Mr Eugene Wrayburn, whom Twemlow finds contemplating Tippins with the moodiest of visages, while that playful creature rallies him on being so long overdue at the woolsack. Skittish is Tippins with Mortimer Lightwood too, and has raps to give him with her fan for having been best man at the nuptials of these deceiving what's-their-names who have gone to pieces. Though, indeed, the fan is generally lively, and taps away at the men in all directions, with something ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... from sources exclusively his own, of laying before his readers a copy of the original draft of the Speech decided upon at a late Cabinet Council. There is a novelty about it which pre-eminently distinguishes it from all preceding orations from the throne or the woolsack, for it has a purpose, and evinces much kind consideration on the part of the Sovereign, in rendering this monody on departed Whiggism as grateful as possible to its surviving friends ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... weakness; loving 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 |
