House of Lords holds itself bound by its decision, the Privy Council, like the Supreme Court of the United States, though a court of final appeal does not consider itself pre cluded from advising the Queen to reverse a judgment previously given (Cushing v. Dupuy, 5 App. Cas. 409, reversing and practically overruling Cuvillier v. Aylwyn, 2 Knapp, 72); and (2) that, while the House of Lords is entitled to the assistance of the judges of the High Court (MacNaughton's case, 10 Clark and Finnelly, 200), no one can attend the Judicial Committee unless he be a Privy Councillor, and summoned. After this general sketch of the constitu tional character of the House of Lords as a judicial tribunal, we may now proceed to trace the careers of some of the leading lawyers who have sat in it. With the great Chancellors we can deal more appropriately when we come, in a subsequent paper, to treat of that hoary and much abused insti tution, the Court of Chancery. Other points with reference to the practice, procedure, etc., of the House of Lords, will be noticed incidentally as they arise in the course of the following silhouettes. LORD WENSLEYDALE. James Parke, afterwards Lord Wensleydale, was the youngest son of Thomas Parke, a Liverpool merchant, and was born in 1782. He was educated at the Macklcsfield Gram mar School and at Trinity College, Cam bridge, where he took his degree of P>. A. in 1803, and graduated asM. A. in 1806. In addition to these customary honors, Parke, during his university career, was elected university scholar in 1799, a scholar of his college in 1800, and also gained the positions of Fifth Wrangler and Senior Chancellor's Medalist. Having for some time prac ticed as a special pleader (he was per haps the greatest master in the mysteries of the science of pleading since it began), he was called to the bar of Lincoln's Inn, whither he had migrated from the Inner
Temple, in 18 13, and joined the Northern Circuit. In 1820 he was taken in to assist the law officers of the Crown in conducting the case against Queen Caroline in the House of Lords, and in 1828, after he had been only fifteen years at the bar, he was raised to the court of King's Bench in suc cession to Mr. Justice Holroyd,and received the usual honors of knighthood. Six years later ( 1834) he and Mr. Justice Aldersonwere made Barons of the Court of Exchequer. Baron Parke retired from the bench in 1855, but was raised to the House of Lords with the life title of Lord Wensleydale in January, 1856. This appointment gave rise to the Wensleydale peerage case, some accounts of which cannot be omitted from a sketch of the House of Lords. Lord Wensleydale was raised to the peerage by letters patent, which at once limited the grant to his life and provided that he should be entitled to a writ of summons as a Lord of Parliament. It was admitted by Lord Campbell that if the Queen had addressed a writ of sum mons to Baron Parke as Lord Wensleydale, and there had been no patent limiting the grant, the House could not have ques tioned his lordship's right to take his seat; and it also followed from the decision in the Clifton case, in the latter part of the 17th century, that the Crown could not refuse a writ of summons to his heir after his death. But the question whether the Crown can at once limit the grant of a peerage to the term of the grantee's life and provide that he should be entitled to a writ of summons, was a different one. It was referred to a commit tee of privileges and answered in the nega tive, after elaborate arguments and discus sions. That the Crown could create a life peerage by patent was practically un disputed. It was also admitted that for four hundred years there had been no instance of a commoner being sent under a peerage for life to sit and vote in the House, of Lords. But it was contended that there were instances prior to that date, and a list
