deliberated in secret, with closed doors. The debates of the
Commons were public. Publicity entails diminution of dignity.

The number of the Lords was unlimited. To create Lords was the menace of
royalty; a means of government.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the House of Lords already
contained a very large number of members. It has increased still further
since that period. To dilute the aristocracy is politic. Elizabeth most
probably erred in condensing the peerage into sixty-five lords. The less
numerous, the more intense is a peerage. In assemblies, the more
numerous the members, the fewer the heads. James II. understood this
when he increased the Upper House to a hundred and eighty-eight lords; a
hundred and eighty-six if we subtract from the peerages the two duchies
of royal favourites, Portsmouth and Cleveland. Under Anne the total
number of the lords, including bishops, was two hundred and seven. Not
counting the Duke of Cumberland, husband of the queen, there were
twenty-five dukes, of whom the premier, Norfolk, did not take his seat,
being a Catholic; and of whom the junior, Cambridge, the Elector of
Hanover, did, although a foreigner. Winchester, termed first and sole
marquis of England, as Astorga was termed sole Marquis of Spain, was
absent, being a Jacobite; so that there were only five marquises, of
whom the premier was Lindsay, and the junior Lothian; seventy-nine
earls, of whom Derby was premier and Islay junior; nine viscounts, of
whom Hereford was premier and Lonsdale junior; and sixty-two barons, of
whom Abergavenny was premier and Hervey junior. Lord Hervey, the junior
baron, was what was called the "Puisne of the House." Derby, of whom
Oxford, Shrewsbury, and Kent took precedence, and who was therefore but
the fourth under James II., became (under Anne) premier earl. Two
chancellors' names had disappeared from the list of barons--Verulam,
under which designation history finds us Bacon; and Wem, under which it
finds us Jeffreys. Bacon and Jeffreys! both names overshadowed, though
by different crimes. In 1705, the twenty-six bishops were reduced to
twenty-five, the see of Chester being vacant. Amongst the bishops some
were peers of high rank, such as William Talbot, Bishop of Oxford, who
was head of the Protestant branch of that family. Others were eminent
Doctors, like John Sharp, Archbishop of York, formerly Dean of Norwich;
the poet, Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, an apoplectic