3-008-414 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Opening of Parliament by Royal Commission, 1862. 'Our Illustration represents the House of Lords as it appeared on the 6th February during the ceremony of delivering her Majesty's Speech...the ceremonial...has been for many years performed by her Majesty in person with undeviating regularity...A glance at our Engraving will show a significant omission in the usual furniture of the House of Lords...the chair on the left hand of the throne, on which the late Prince Consort was accustomed to sit...has been removed...As is probably well known, when the Queen does not attend in the House of Peers, the ceremony of opening or proroguing Parliament differs from the ordinary mode of giving the Royal assent to bills only in the circumstance that the Lord Chancellor reads the Speech which has been prepared for her Majesty...a few ladies who are admitted to occupy those which we are accustomed to call the peeresses' places appear in ordinary morning costume. On this occasion the universality of their mourning adds to the sombreness and depressing aspect of the scene. On a bench in front of the throne, and at the back of the woolsack, sit the five Lords Commissioners. The centre figure, it need hardly be said, is the Lord Chancellor'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.