Woolsack

[f. WOOL sb. + SACK sb.¹ Cf. Du. wolzak, G. wollsack.]

  1.  A large package or bale of wool.

a. 1300.  Sat. People Kildare, xi. in E. E. P. (1862), 154. Ȝe marchans wiþ ȝur gret packes of draperie … and ȝur wol sackes.

1390.  Gower, Conf., I. 99. Bot lich unto the wollesak Sche proferth hire unto this knyht.

a. 1552.  Leland, Itin. (1768), II. 32. Sum say … that Wollesakkes be yn Ewelm in token of Marchaundise.

1575.  Gascoigne, Posies, Praise Mistr. (1907), 55. I seeke to wey y^e woolsack down, with one poore pepper grain.

1611.  Beaum. & Fl., Knt. Burn. Pestle, Prol. The rearing of London bridge upon Woollsacks.

1657.  Trapp, Comm. Esther i. 10. 107. Having farced his body with good chear like a wool-sack.

1715.  Lond. Gaz., No. 5324/2. Woollsacks and other Materials of use in making a Siege.

1758.  Johnson, Idler, No. 87, ¶ 2. As woolsacks deaden arrows though they cannot repel them.

1879.  Farrar, St. Paul (1883), 457. Old London Bridge was built not ‘on woolsacks,’ but out of the proceeds of a tax on wool.

  b.  Applied jocularly to a corpulent person.

1596.  Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., II. iv. 148. Prin. How now Woolsacke, what mutter you?

  2.  A seat made of a bag of wool for the use of judges when summoned to attend the House of Lords (in recent practice only at the opening of Parliament); also, the usual seat of the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords, made of a large square bag of wool without back or arms and covered with cloth. Often allusively with reference to the position of the Lord Chancellor as the highest judicial officer; hence, the woolsack, the Lord-Chancellorship; on the woolsack, in this office.

[1539:  see SACK sb.¹ 1 d.]

a. 1577.  Sir T. Smith, Commw. Eng., II. iii. (1589), 49. In the middest thereof vpon woolsackes sitteth the Iudges of the realme, the maister of the roules, and the secretaries of estate. But these that sit on the woolsackes haue no voice in the house.

1586.  J. Hooker, Hist. Irel., in Holinshed, II. 123/2. In the middle roome beneath them sit the chiefe iustices and iudges of the realme, the barons of the excheker, the kings sergeants, and all such as be of the kings learned councell,… and all these sit vpon great woollsacks, couered with red cloth.

1647.  Clarendon, Hist. Reb., III. § 11. The Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, upon the Wooll-sack.

1710.  J. Chamberlayne, St. Gt. Brit., 95. The Lord Chancellor … sits on the first Wool-Sack…. Upon other Wool-Sacks sit the Judges, the King’s Council at Law, and the Masters of Chancery.

1737.  Gentl. Mag., VII. 536/2. It had always been deemed inconsistent with y^e Dignity of that House, to have any Papers or Writings read a second Time by the noble Lord on the Wool-Sack.

1785.  Rolliad, Prob. Odes, xvi. 8. By G—d I swore, while George shall reign, The Seals, in spite of changes, to retain, Nor quit the Woolsack, till he quits the throne.

1796.  T. Morton, Way to get Married, I. i. (1800), 16. Caust. Pray stick to the law. Tang. And to the woolsack. Does not the hope of that … cram our courts full of barristers, with heads as emply as they leave their clients’ pockets?

1817.  Evans, Parl. Deb., 414. The Lord Chancellor took the Woolsack at one o’clock.

1842.  J. Wilson, Chr. North (1857), I. 108. What seated Thurlow, and Wedderburne,… and Brougham on the woolsack? Work.

1854.  Emerson, Lett. & Soc. Aims, Eloquence, Wks. (Bohn), III. 189. If the performance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid in England … with seats in the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks.

1862.  Miss Braddon, Lady Audley, xxv. She drags her husband on to the woolsack, or pushes him into parliament.

1901.  Empire Rev., I. 467. The woolsack is technically not in the House, a fact recognised by the Standing Orders which provide that when the Lord Chancellor wishes to speak he is ‘to go to his own place as a Peer.’

  attrib.  1633.  Davenant, Cœlum Brit., Wks. 1673, I. 362. Though I am but a Woollsack-god, and have no vote in the sanction of new Laws.