“A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it”. This was noted by Walter Bagehot, the great 19th century writer on the British Constitution, who is still viewed as a great authority.
Roy Jenkins (later Lord Jenkins of Hill Head) was even more dismissive, calling the early 20th century House “Mr Balfour's poodle”, because he saw it as the lapdog of the then leader of the Tory party, in opposition to the radical Liberals.
Even Disraeli, who as an older man expressed a rather different sentiment, wrote of the House of Lords in Sibyl, published in 1845, that Pitt the Younger's creation of a hundred and forty peers had “created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with the patrician oligarchy. He made peers of second-rate squires and fat graziers”.
This is part of a long tradition of criticisms of appointments to the House of Lords, which have often been a bone of contention.
Thomas Lorby, in the reign of James I (1603-25), noted that “Buckingham, knowing Roberts to be rich, forced him to take the title of honour; and that in consideration thereof he paid £10,000”. Likewise, Cavendish was said to have paid £10,000 to become an earl.
About a hundred years later there was a great row over Queen Anne's appointment of a dozen peers to pass the Treaty of Utrecht. Thus, in 1719, early in the reign of George I, this led to the introduction of the Peerages Bill in the House of Lords, with the aim of limiting the number of peers that could be created. It failed to pass in the Commons; hence the continued arguments about creations in the 18th century, culminating in Pitt's recommendations mentioned above, which so upset Disraeli.
A further hundred years or so later the scandal was Lloyd George's sale of honours, which was more financial than political, but remarkably similar to James I's effort.
Concerns and allegations over sales of peerage then re-emerged during the prime ministership of Tony Blair, although in the end no charges were brought.
Despite its ancient roots (along with the Privy Council, it is the descendant of the Anglo-Saxon Witan and the early Norman Curia Regis), the above examples show how the upper house has long been mocked. Nonetheless, its ability to have continued across centuries of vicissitudes, and even abolition under Cromwell, shows it must serve some purpose.
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