House of Lords

The House of Lords is England’s upper chamber, where inherited rank carries political and judicial authority. In the novel it appears both as a working institution—with formal rules for admission and voting—and as the stage on which Gwynplaine’s sudden elevation exposes the distance between aristocratic privilege and the lives of ordinary people.

Identity and Constitutional Functions

The narrator describes peerage as a political fiction that makes its holders, in a qualified sense, equal to the king. The institution took different forms in France and England: the French peer was represented as a mock king, while the English peer was described as a more genuine, if less exalted, prince. This account makes the Lords more than a gathering of titled individuals. Its members possess a recognized place within the political order, and that status gives the chamber authority beyond personal distinction.

The peers’ functions are divided between legislation and justice. They sit as a higher legislative chamber in a room reserved for that purpose, but they also sit as a court in Westminster Hall. The Lords does not convene as a court unless summoned by the Crown. Its judicial role therefore belongs to a system in which royal authority determines when the peers assemble, while their rank gives them a jurisdiction distinct from that of ordinary courts. The adjacent Court of King’s Bench and Court of Chancery provide different forms of justice beneath the Lords: the former is associated with the king’s authority, the latter with the Chancellor’s counsel on mercy.

Peerage, Inheritance, and Royal Authority

The novel connects access to the chamber with the creation and transfer of peerages. Creating a new peerage is presented as politically consequential: it grants a favor to one person while risking the jealousy of many others. Transferring an existing title, by contrast, can be treated as a continuation of a name and may cause less disturbance. This distinction shapes the fortunes of Lord David Dirry-Moir, whose advancement to the Lords is favored by the Crown so long as it can be achieved through a substituted peerage rather than the creation of a new one.

After Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie dies in exile, rumors circulate that he married Ann Bradshaw and left a legitimate son. If true, that son would be the rightful heir. The reports are uncertain, but James II settles the question in institutional form: royal patents establish David as heir in default of legitimate issue and place him in Clancharlie’s titles, rights, and prerogatives, conditional on his eventual marriage to the infant Duchess Josiana. The patents are registered in the House of Lords. The chamber is thus not only where rank is exercised; it is also where a royal decision about succession receives formal record. The later recognition of Gwynplaine as Clancharlie’s legitimate heir will overturn the arrangement on which David’s elevation depended.

Admission and Ceremonial Order

Gwynplaine’s entry into the Lords makes its hierarchy visible as a carefully ordered procession. Two peers appointed by the Lord Chancellor serve as his sponsors: Charles Mildmay, Lord Fitzwalter, and Augustus Arundel, Lord Arundel of Trerice. The King-at-Arms identifies them as Gwynplaine’s equals and instructs him to return their salute. Their titles and places on the baronial roll are announced before they introduce him to the chamber.

The ceremony organizes people and symbols around the new peer. The sponsors take their positions beside Gwynplaine; the Mace-bearer carries the great mace surmounted by a crowned lion; and officers of the House and guards accompany the procession toward the chamber. Salutes from peers and soldiers mark Gwynplaine’s passage through an institution whose authority is expressed not only through law, but through precedence, titles, insignia, and carefully observed gestures. His admission is a public confirmation of status, even though the identity beneath that status has been hidden from him and disputed by the Crown’s earlier settlement.

Deliberation and Voting

The Lords’ procedures are shown in operation during a vote on a bill to increase by £100,000 the annual provision for the Prince and Queen Anne’s consort. After the House has debated the measure for several days and the debate has closed, the Lord Chancellor directs that voting begin with the puisne baron. The clerk opens the large book containing the Peerage list; each lord is called by name and must answer either content or non-content, with an opportunity to explain the reasons for his vote.

The procedure gives the vote an ordered, individual form: the roll defines who may participate, precedence determines where the calling begins, and each peer publicly records a position. Yet the formal equality of votes within this process exists alongside an unequal society whose members do not share the privileges of the voters. The chamber can deliberate about the provision of royal income through established rules, while the needs of people outside its ranks remain a question its procedures do not themselves resolve.

Gwynplaine’s Challenge and the Institution’s Significance

Once recognized as a peer, Gwynplaine addresses the Lords from within the chamber’s formal order. He presents himself as wretchedness and says that he has a word for the lords. His speech turns the encounter into a confrontation between inherited authority and the human condition that authority has kept at a distance: he describes the peers’ power, wealth, pleasure, and apparent forgetfulness of others, then announces that he brings them news of mankind’s existence.

The scene makes the Lords’ double significance central to the novel. Gwynplaine’s recovered title admits him to the institution, but his appeal is not simply for personal acceptance; he uses the access his rank provides to speak about those without it. The chamber’s ceremonies have established him as an equal among peers, while his speech tests what that equality can mean in a society divided by privilege. The contrast also sharpens the history of the title itself: a royal patent can transfer rank and prerogatives, but formal recognition alone does not close the distance between the governing elite and the people whose lives Gwynplaine brings before them.