Fermain Clancharlie. Moreover, he
had brought forward the hour for the ceremonies; so that the new peer
actually made his entrance into the House before the House had
assembled.

For the investiture of a peer on the threshold, and not in the chamber
itself, there were precedents. The first hereditary baron, John de
Beauchamp, of Holt Castle, created by patent by Richard II., in 1387,
Baron Kidderminster, was thus installed. In renewing this precedent the
Lord Chancellor was creating for himself a future cause for
embarrassment, of which he felt the inconvenience less than two years
afterwards on the entrance of Viscount Newhaven into the House of Lords.

Short-sighted as we have already stated him to be, Lord William Cowper
scarcely perceived the deformity of Gwynplaine; while the two sponsors,
being old and nearly blind, did not perceive it at all.

The Lord Chancellor had chosen them for that very reason.

More than this, the Lord Chancellor, having only seen the presence and
stature of Gwynplaine, thought him a fine-looking man. When the
door-keeper opened the folding doors to Gwynplaine there were but few
peers in the house; and these few were nearly all old men. In assemblies
the old members are the most punctual, just as towards women they are
the most assiduous.

On the dukes' benches there were but two, one white-headed, the other
gray--Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, and Schomberg, son of that
Schomberg, German by birth, French by his marshal's baton, and English
by his peerage, who was banished by the edict of Nantes, and who, having
fought against England as a Frenchman, fought against France as an
Englishman. On the benches of the lords spiritual there sat only the
Archbishopof Canterbury, Primate of England, above; and below, Dr. Simon
Patrick, Bishop of Ely, in conversation with Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquis
of Dorchester, who was explaining to him the difference between a gabion
considered singly and when used in the parapet of a field work, and
between palisades and fraises; the former being a row of posts driven
info the ground in front of the tents, for the purpose of protecting the
camp; the latter sharp-pointed stakes set up under the wall of a
fortress, to prevent the escalade of the besiegers and the desertion of
the besieged; and the marquis was explaining further the method of
placing fraises in the ditches of redoubts, half of each stake being
buried and half exposed. Thomas Thynne, Viscount W