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incident is a part of their gravity. He felt the necessity of so
ordering matters that the admission of Gwynplaine should take place
without any hitch, and like that of any other successor to the peerage.
It was for this reason that the Lord Chancellor directed that the
reception of Lord Fermain Clancharlie should take place at the evening
sitting. The Chancellor being the doorkeeper--"Quodammodo ostiarus,"
says the Norman charter; "Januarum cancellorumque," says
Tertullian--he can officiate outside the room on the threshold; and Lord
William Cowper had used his right by carrying out under the nave the
formalities of the investiture of Lord 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.
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