character, one of the clauses providing that "every Lord of Appeal in
Ordinary should be entitled during his life to rank as a Baron by such
style as her Majesty may be pleased to appoint, and shall during the
time that he continues in office as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, and no
longer be entitled to a writ of summons to attend, sit, and vote in the
House of Lords. His dignity as a Lord of Parliament shall not descend to
his heirs." As this act was passed long after the period at which the
present volume closes, it does not belong to the writer to examine how
far this act, in providing that every Lord of Appeal shall for the time
rank as a Baron (the Lords of Appeal being, of course, appointed by the
crown), is entitled to be spoken of as introducing a great
constitutional innovation, big with future consequences, as it has been
described by some writers.]

[Footnote 293: In one notorious instance, that of the Earl of Bristol
(_confer_ Hallam, i., 518), in the time of Charles I., the House of
Lords had interfered and compelled the issue of the writ; their action
forming a precedent for their right of interference in such matters,
which in the present case the Lord Chancellor denied.]

[Footnote 294: The grant of a pension of L1000 a year, with a baronetcy,
to General Havelock, and more recently to Sir F. Roberts, are, it is
believed, the only exceptions to this rule.]

[Footnote 295: Bishop Lonsdale, of Lichfield, in reference to Simon
Magus, from whose offer of money to the Apostles the offence derives its
name, denying that there was any similarity between his sin and the act
of purchasing an advowson or presentation, remarked that it might just
as fitly be called magic as simony.]

[Footnote 296: It has been, and will probably continue to be, a matter
of dispute whether the first conception and plan of the insurrection
originated with the restless boldness of the Mohammedans or the deeper
fanaticism of the Hindoos. It is notorious that the prophecy that a
century had been assigned by the Almighty as the allotted period of our
supremacy in India had for many years been circulated among both; and,
though the conspiracy was at first generally attributed to the
Mohammedans, the argument that the period from the battle of Plassy, in
1757, to the outbreak in 1857, though an exact century according to the
Hindoo calendar, is three years longer according to the Mohammedan
computation, seems an almost irresistible pro