Woolsack of Appeal and the Justices of the High Court only attend Parliament for the State Opening. Woolsack The Woolsack is the seat of the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords, the Upper House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. In the 14th century King Edward III (1327–1377) commanded that his Lord Chancellor whilst in council should sit on a wool bale, now known as "The Woolsack", in order to symbolise the central nature and huge importance of the wool trade to the economy of England in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it was largely to protect the vital English
History of reform of the House of Lords the legal powers of the House of Lords. After the split in the Liberal Party over the First Irish Home Rule Bill in 1886, most Whig aristocrats left the Gladstonian Liberal party and became Liberal Unionists. The effect was to reinforce an already large Conservative majority in the House of Lords. Liberal governments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had difficulty in getting major legislation through the upper house. On issues as central to the politics of the day as Home Rule and as dear to the hearts of radicals as the end of plural voting, the Lords