_Thomas Betson_ A MERCHANT OF THE STAPLE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY Some men of noble stock were made, some glory in the murder blade: Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honourable Trade! -- JAMES ELROY FLECKER _The Golden Journey to Samarcand_ The visitor to the House of Lords, looking respectfully upon that august assembly, cannot fail to be struck by a stout and ungainly object facing the throne--an ungainly object upon which in full session of Parliament, he will observe seated the Lord Chancellor of England.

The object is a woolsack, and it is stuffed as full of pure history as the office of Lord Chancellor itself.

For it reminds a cotton-spinning, iron-working generation that the greatness of England was built up, not upon the flimsy plant which comes to her to be manufactured from the Far East and West of the world, nor upon the harsh metal delved from her bowels, but upon the wool which generation after generation has grown on the backs of her black-faced sheep.

First in the form of a raw material sought after eagerly by all the cloth-makers of Europe, then in the form of a manufacture carried on in her own towns and villages, and sent out far and wide in ships, wool was the foundation of England's greatness right up to the time of the Industrial Revolution, when cotton and iron took its place.

So if you look at old pictures of the House of Lords, in Henry VIII's reign, or in Elizabeth's, you will see the woolsack before the throne,[1] as you will see it if you visit the House today.