Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/605

APPENDIX G 587 office for life.(') It was never intended that a summons to sit in this House should create an hereditary dignity, though some of the recipients (as, for instance, Speaker Lenthall) were under the mistaken impression that it was meant to do so-C*) Having passed these important resolutions, the House adjourned for some months, "during which time," as Ludlow informs us, "Cromwel endeavoured to make up a collection of men of all interests, to fill that which was called the Other House," sarcastically adding, "the principal part of them were such as had procured their present possessions by their wits, and were resolved to enlarge them by selling their consciences. "("=) Dugdale is equally outspoken in his criticism: "That he might the better allure those of the Army, and some other which were no great friends to him, to con- form the more pliantly to this his new settled Dominion, he tickled them with the specious Title of Lords by calling them to sit in the other House; oblig- ing also many other desperate and mean persons, which were Officers of the Army, with the like shadows of Honour."() It was a simple matter for a subservient Parliament to authorize the formation of a Second Chamber, and to define the limits of its judicial power. But it proved a far more difficult task for the Lord Protector to make a satisfactory selection from the motley horde of candidates who, like some of our modern demagogues, were by no means reluctant to have great- ness thrust upon them and to exchange the turmoil of the Commons for the dignified seclusion of the Lords. As Thurloe wrote to Henry Crom- well, 10 Nov. 1657: "His Highnes is now upon the difficult worke of nameing another house; the Lord be with hym in it ... A mistake here will be like that of warre and manage, it admits noe repentance." And again, i Dec. 1657: "The difficulty proves great betweene those who are fitt and not willinge to serve, and those who are willinge and expect it and are not fitt." It must not be supposed, however, that Cromwell's constitutional bantling was entirely, or even mainly, composed of needy place-hunters (^) "Those that sitt in the other House are to bee for life, and as any dye his place is to bee filled up with the consent of the House it selfe, and not otherwise, so that if that House bee but made good at first it is likely to continue soe for ever, as farre as man can provide." (Thurloe to Monck, 5 Mar. 1656/7). A Bill was brought into the House of Lords, 17 Mar. 1658/9, which provided that "none of their heires . . . shall claime right to sitt in that House, unlesse they bee first sum- moned and approved as aforesaid." (*>) "The Lords had been attacked as hereditary legislators, but after their legis- lative power had been abolished their claims to honour had been fully admitted, and some had been elected to sit in the Parliament and the Council of State . . . This dis- tinction between hereditary honours and hereditary authority Cromwell had through- out sedulously observed . . . To those persons on whom he wished to bestow a peerage he issued patents creating them and their heirs peers of England." (C. H. Firth's Cromwell and the House oj Lordi, " Macmillan's Magazine," Jan. I 895). ("=) Ludlow's Memoirs, edited by C. H. Firth, vol. ii, p. 30. (■*) Dugdale's Short View of the Late Troubles in England, p. 454.