I fear that other commitments have meant I have rather neglected the blog recently. I hope to make up for lost time. Congratulations to Dave H and Jonathan, who were the winners of the previous quiz. This week’s quiz relates to the House, or rather the chamber. As many readers will know, the House has not always sat in the current chamber. After the chamber of the Commons was destroyed by enemy bombing on 10 May 1941, the Commons moved into the chamber of the Lords and the Lords sat in the robing room. Church House, Westminster, was also used in the war for parliamentary sittings.
1. The first question relates to where the House may have sat had extra peers been created. King George V agreed, reluctantly, that he would create 500 new peerages if the Lords failed to pass the Parliament Bill in 1911. The Bill was passed, so the new peerages were not created. But some thought had been given to where the House would sit with such a large number of members. What venue had been tentatively considered?
2. The second question relates to the time that the Commons sat in the chamber of the House of Lords. What mark did Churchill leave on the Table of the House?
3. The third relates to the history of the House after the Commons moved out. There has been one further occasion when the members of the House of Lords have had to relocate and sit elsewhere. When was it? Why was it? And where did the House sit?
As always, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners.
I enjoy certain uncertainties, of sense and/or meaning, that leak through,
in this there is one in the title
‘Peripatetic’ (House):
the term is usually associaterd with ‘peripatetic preachers’
and qua ‘itinerant monks’;
rather than with a still-firmly established ‘House’ which is merely doing one or two ‘short-walks’ between alternative Meeting-Places.
The Lords might also ‘cover’ the hiddenly-linked matter of ‘God’s House’,
which as children many of us were led to believe means “the House where God dwells”
rather than
“the Centre to which each ‘believer’-person brings their particular part of the Immanuel-God”;
because in either a theological or lay sense God needs to be seen or thought-of as being sort-of ‘peripatetic’, between each of His People – almost as it were ‘immanent’ all the Time and in every person
(as well as being ‘immanent’ within/between other ‘branches’ of His Creation, for instance among His ‘sacrificial’ animals and other creatures as they are ‘harvested’ by human-hands or tools (I hesitate to include the term ‘weapons’).
——-
So it seems to me that some very interesting ‘secondary’ matters can arise from ‘between the lines’ of a blog.
Further a propos a “perambulatory parliament”,
St Francis advised
“Preach the gospel to everyone you meet. Use words only when necessary”.
———–
I do not ‘know’ what mark Winston Churchill left on the “Table of the House”;
but history records that he was blessed with, and thereby was probably a good example to others in,
‘polyphasic-sleeping’ (able to ‘drop off’ at any time of the 24-hour day);
a natural ability prioritised by the various emergency-peripatics, and bare ‘run for your life’ transients, that World War 2 brought to so many millions, of all sorts of people, lifestyles, and walks of life.
——-
Tinily,
[My father’s favourite hymn was for many years “O For A Closer Walk With God”; (R.I.P.) –
which no doubt he would have sung, if only under his breath, had he been one of the House’s members having to ‘relocate peripatetically’ from time to occasional time].
@Miles:
Do you think your Dad would like to have discussed his doubts about religion with this glorious new look priest. Scroll down on the page and you will see the full length view.
Would he be able to distinguish between this look of a dominatrix as a woman of God?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2237596/The-truth-Queen-Britain-children.html
And the tears shed shows no sign of acceptance of God’s will does it?
This week’s quiz has me stumped.
Chris K: I think it may be the first I have managed to produce that is Google-proof. I may have to reveal the answers shortly, with – for the first time – no winners.
The answer to Q3 was Summer 1980, to the Royal Gallery. The ceiling was being fixed around that time, so I assume the move was related to that issue.
Westminster Abbey?
Churchill dented the table (fist pounding?)
Does the Accession Council (6 February 1952) at St James’s count?
A biographical snippet might ‘answer’ Maude, whilst remaining pertinent and perhaps of a general interest:
‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ were by far the main proponnts of God,
the Church falling last, even less timeframe-owning than School (but overall more hours-commanding than the one-hour Divinity classroom).
Father was by dint of WW1 and the Depression, ‘peripatetic’
and moved where martching-orders or job-availability took him, and was a cokmpany-car’d representative for an International company when in 1939 he re-volunteered for Army service and travelled wherever posted;
after WW2 he returned to the same Company, but was ‘promted’ to “Lecturer” –
still ‘peripatetic’ in a company-car !.
Sundays he alone made the dessert, always “Queen’s Pudding”.
He was a calm disciplinarian; being a Gilbert & Sullivan lead-baritone, he had some good English ‘educatiuon’ from such cooperative-problem-solving choruses as “In a Contemplative Fashion…q
men, women, girls and boys each having both an ‘equal’ and an appointed ‘place’
Sorry, this was in draft-stage and only intended as a reply immediately under Maude’s question about (‘) how far any dominator/dominatrix would be considered a ‘Person of God’;
but it slipped through as a main comment.
Sorry.
He must have been a man worthy of a great deal of admiration and respest.
Thank you for the answer, Miles.
However, if I was a regular Churchgoer my natural instinct would lead me away, fast, from entertaining a cleric, who, underneath it all, felt subjugation was the answer to my prayers.
And then, when thwarted, weep like a baby, rather than kneel and accept the will of their proclaimed almighty mover and shaker. Who, above all things, must have had a hand in the outcome of the decision taken.
I seek now to reconcile our various life-findings and thoughts to the topic
(‘)peripatetic governance(‘).
Perhaps both the human-race on-the-ground and our select few governance people who guide, control and command us,
are meant
by God’s overall-plan as well as by subsidiary ‘evolutionary movements’ for both recurrent-short-term individual-development and long-term frequent tribal ‘Movements’ on scales such as the long-emigration out of Africa to the very Corners of the whole Earth, and the ‘Agrarian Revolution’ and ‘Industrial-Revolution’ despite the strong tendency of Civilisation to make us ‘sedentary’ ‘settled’ and ‘fireside-lazy’,
actually to keep us healthily-moving and always becoming ‘more actively and efficiently human’.
In which case, any relocation from time to time, including of our Governance-House(s)
should be helping our Commons and our Lords members to be more healthily ‘moving’ too, as individuals ?
I’d guess that Churchill left a cigar burn on the table.
So far, Dave H and Rich are getting there; one right and one almost right between you….