Woolsack

Woolsack (pronounced woo l-sak)

(1) A sack intended to carry wool (sometimes wool-sack).

(2) The speaker’s chair in the House of Lords, one of a number of cloth-covered seats or divans, stuffed with wool, once used also by law lords, but best known as the seat of the Lord Chancellor and now the Lord Speaker.

(3) A reference to the historic Lord Chancellor's office.

(4) The historic name for the modern Australian wool bale.

1250-1300: Middle English compound word wool + sack.  Wool came from the Middle English wolle, from Old English wull, from Proto-Germanic wullō (cognate with the Saterland Frisian wulle, the Low German wull, the Dutch wol, German wolle and Norwegian ull.  All are thought derived from the primitive hwĺ̥hneh, thought also to have influenced the Welsh gwlân, the Latin lāna, the Lithuanian vìlna, the Russian во́лос (vólos), the Balau влас and the Albanian lesh.  All meant variously “wool, hair, fleece”.

Sack was from the Middle English sak (bag, sackcloth) from the Old English sacc (sack, bag) and sæcc (sackcloth, sacking), both from the Proto-Germanic sakkuz (sack), from the Classical Latin saccus (large bag), derived from the Ancient Greek σάκκος ((sákkos (bag of coarse cloth)).  Ultimate source is though Semitic, possibly Phoenician.  Word was cognate with the Dutch zak, the German Sack, the Swedish säck, the Hebrew שַׂק‎ ((śaq, sack, sackcloth)), the Aramaic סַקָּא‎, the Classical Syriac ܣܩܐ‎, Ge'ez ሠቅ (śäḳ), the Akkadian saqqu and the Egyptian sꜣgꜣ (to gather together).  There are sack factions among the etymologists.  Some suggest sack was originally Egyptian, a nominal derivative of sꜣq that also yielded the Coptic sok and made its way into Greek by way of a Semitic intermediary.  Others reject this view on the technical grounds that an originally Egyptian word would be expected to yield the Hebrew סַק rather than שַׂק (only they understand this stuff).  This faction posits the Coptic and Greek words are both borrowings from Semitic, with the Coptic word perhaps developing via Egyptian sꜣgꜣ.

The Horsesack

The Woolsack is the seat of the Lord Speaker in the House of Lords, the UK’s upper house although until the constitutional reforms of the twenty-first century, that was the role of the lord chancellor, an office dating at least from the Norman Conquest though references to the title appear as early as 605.  The New Labour government attempted in 2003 to abolish the office but a review determined it couldn’t be done without an act of Parliament and that was a distraction the government at the time preferred not to inflict on itself.  Instead, enabling legislation providing for the creation of the office of Lord Speaker and a redefinition of the role of lord chancellor was drafted in 2004 and, after a few squabbles, received royal assent a year later with the structural changes effected by 2006.

The Lord Chancellor (once styled as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain) is in the UK’s order of precedence, the highest-ranking among the extant Great Officers of State, out-ranked only by certain royal personages and the Archbishop of Canterbury.  A lord chancellor is appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime-minister and before the acts of union which made them constituent parts of Great Britain, there were separate lord chancellors for the Kingdom of England (including the Principality of Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland, the office of Lord Chancellor of Ireland disestablished in 1922, consequent upon the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) which granted Ireland a considerable autonomy which in the years to come would evolve into independence.  That the office of Lord Chancellor for Ireland existed as early as the twelfth century seems certain but whether this was something distinct from the English office is unclear and the oldest surviving records which verify a separate Irish office date from the thirteenth century.  For centuries the Irish appointee was a clergyman, usually English and while lay chancellors tended to be the rule after the Reformation (no cleric appointed after 1665), Irish-born appointments were rare before the mid-nineteenth century.

Emulated woolsack: A pregnant Lindsay Lohan in Sandro Ona sack dress, April 2023.  Historically, crocheted garments were fashioned from wool but the outer fabric of Sandro's Ono was 100% cotton (the lining 62% viscose & 38% polyamide) illustrating what's possible with modern techniques.

Today, as minister for justice, the Lord Chancellor sits in cabinet and is responsible for the administration and independence of the courts.  In this detail things differ from the Australian practice because in the UK, both the attorney-general and solicitor-general sit in parliament, although, by modern convention, the former now does not attend cabinet except when summoned to provide advice.  New Labour’s constitutional changes not only moved the roll of presiding over the Lords to the newly-created lord speaker but also ended the lord chancellor’s roll as head of the judiciary in England and Wales and presiding judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court, these duties assumed respectively by the lord chief justice and the chancellor of the High Court.  The rationale of the changes in 2005 was to give constitutional effect to the separation of powers (in the British context a division between the legislature & executive (which passes and administers the laws) and the judiciary (which interprets and enforces the laws).  In practice, the distinction had for many years been observed but structurally, it looked very murky, the lord chancellor as a cabinet member belonging to (1) the executive, on the Woolsack as presiding officer in the Lords belonging to (2) the legislature and as a judge in the chancery division, belonging to (3) the judiciary, ruling on laws he or she had earlier participated in passing.

It was the fourteenth century Edward III (1312–1377; King of England 1327-1377) who commanded his Lord Chancellor, when in council, should sit on the wool bale which became known as The Woolsack, the king wishing to draw attention to the crucial importance of the wool trade to the economy of medieval England.  In 1938, to symbolize imperial unity, the Lords directed the Woolsack be re-stuffed with wool from throughout the empire at which point it was discovered the Woolsack was actually stuffed with horsehair.  Even when re-stuffed, because of the construction, some horsehair had to be added to ensure structural integrity, the Lord Chancellor, (Quintin Hogg, second Lord Hailsham, 1907–2001; first entered parliament in 1938, Lord Chancellor 1970-1974 & 1979–1987), noting in 1986 that “wise Victorian ancestors” were responsible for the substitution.