Chancellor of France

“ The bishop was this year sent to France, along with other ambassadors, to propose terms which were too hard to be accepted even in the distracted state of that kingdom. In opening parliament on 4 Nov. 1415 the chancellor embarked on the noble exploits of the king in the war with France, and made an appeal to the gratitude of the people, which was answered by a liberal grant. The war, however, placed the king in constant need of money, and Henry found his uncle the chancellor always ready to lend. ”

“ There is obviously a vast difference between such an official as Kaunitz, who as house, court, and state chancellor was minister of foreign affairs, and as “united aulic” chancellor had a general superiority over the whole machinery of government, and the lord high chancellor in England, the chancelier in France, or the canciller mayor in Castile, though the title was the same. The development of the office in Austria must be understood in order to explain the position and functions of the imperial chancellor (Reichs Kanzler) of the modern German empire. ”

“ The Parliament made remonstrances against such excessive rigor, and refused to register the ordinance. The chancellor, Duprat, insisted, and even threatened. “To the king alone,” said he, “belongs the right of regulating the administration of his state obey, or the king will see in you only rebels, whom he will know how to chastise.” For a year the Parliament held out; but the chancellor persisted more obstinately in having his way, and, on the 11th of February, 1517, the ordinance was registered under a formal order from the king, to which the name was given of “letters of command.” ”

“ He accepted the office of chancellor to Louis of France when that prince came to claim the English crown in 1216. His preaching encouraged the barons and the citizens of London to disregard the pope's excommunication of Louis's partisans ”

“ In 1334 he became High Chancellor of England, and Treasurer in 1336, resigning the former office in 1335, so that he might help the King in dealing with affairs abroad and in Scotland, and took a most distinguished part in diplomatic negociations between England and France. ”

“ The lord chancellor always belongs to a political party and is affected by its fluctuations. This has often been denounced as destructive of the independence and calm deliberativeness essential to the purity and efficiency of the bench. ”

“ Now, at the King's age and in the circumstances of the reign, the man who becomes Chancellor with the cognisance of affairs of state, might well become first minister, by reason of the priority of rank which his office bestows. ”

“ The greatest political dignitary in the British government, the one endowed by law with the most exalted and most diverse functions, the only great officer of state who has retained his ancient rights, the man who defies the doctrine of the separation of powers more than any other personage on earth, is the Lord Chancellor. ”

“ One day, when the king was in a rage with the parliaments, the chancellor seized the opportunity to tell him that the cabal, who were opposed to my presentation, testified so much resistance, under the idea, and in the hope, that they would be supported by the parliaments of Paris.
“If your majesty,” added the chancellor, “had less condescension towards these malcontents, they would fear your authority more.”
“You will see,” replied the king, “that it will be their audacity which will urge me on to a step, which otherwise I should wish to avoid.” ”

“ By Article XXIV. of the Act of Union (1705) one great seal was appointed to be kept for all public acts, and in this department the lord chancellor’s authority extends to the whole of Britain, and thus the commissions of the peace for Scotland as well as England issue from him. [1] As an administrative officer, as a judge and as head of the law, he acts merely for England. ”

“ Only in recent times has the Chancellor been necessarily made a peer, and there exists no statutory restriction incapacitating any man, unless he be a Roman Catholic, from holding the office of Lord Chancellor. ”

“ The president of the republic is the grand master of the order; the administration is in the hands of a grand chancellor, who has a council of the order nominated by the grand master. The chancellery is housed in the Palais de la Légion de l’Honneur, which, burnt during the Commune, was rebuilt in 1878. The order consists of the five classes of grand cross (limited to 80) , grand officer (200) , commander (1000) , officers (4000) , and chevalier or knight, in which the number is unlimited. These limitations in number do not affect the foreign recipients of the order. ”

“ When the heavy artillery of interest, power, and prejudice is brought into the field, the paper pellets of the brain go for nothing: his labyrinth of nice, lady-like doubts explodes like a mine of gun-powder. The Chancellor may weigh and palter—the courtier is decided, the politician is firm, and rivetted to his place in the Cabinet! On all the great questions that have divided party opinion or agitated the public mind, the Chancellor has been found uniformly and without a single exception on the side of prerogative and power, and against every proposal for the advancement of freedom. ”

“ Surely to have been called by the acclamations of a whole people to defend the most important of its fortresses is quite as exalted a distinction as to be appointed a Lord Chamberlain or a Lord Chancellor by the favor of one minister, and liable to be dismissed the next morning by another. ”

“ What I’m going to do is write to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”
“Good gracious, Godfrey! Why the Chancellor of the Exchequer? What interest can you expect him to take in your fights? If you are going to make a political matter of it at all, you’d far better try the Secretary of State for War. It’s much more in his line.” ”

“ At the same time the Chancellor to-day is to some indefinable extent responsible to Parliament, and therefore to the people, in so far as they are represented by it, for he must keep on tolerable terms with Parliament as well as with the Emperor, or he will have to give up office. ”

“ At the same time, as the people had shewn symptoms of discontent, on account of the great offices being all in the distinguished families, it was thought expedient to ordain, that the Chancellor should always be taken from among the Secretaries of the senate, who were citizens. ”

“ In the reign of Edward I. we begin to perceive signs of the rise of the extraordinary or equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor. The numerous petitions addressed to the King and his Council, seeking the interposition of the royal grace and favour either to mitigate the harshness of the Common Law or supply its deficiencies, had been in the special care of the Chancellor, who examined and reported upon them to the King. ... ”

“ The mere delivery of the king’s great seal, or the taking it away, is all the ceremony that is used in creating or unmaking a chancellor, the officer of the greatest weight and power subsisting in the kingdom. The first chancellor in England was appointed in the reign of William the Conqueror, and with only one exception, it was enjoyed by ecclesiastics until the time of Elizabeth, when such officers were called keepers of the great seal. ”

“ The Chancellor may act pursuant to such action by the Emperor, and may make it the basis of his decisions, whenever he is in agreement with the Emperor's point of view. Otherwise he is supposed to maintain his own point of view and carry it out (Kruger dispatch) .
5. According to the Constitution, the Emperor has no means of compelling the Chancellor or the Foreign Office to accept his views. He cannot cause the Chancellor to adopt a policy for which the latter feels that he cannot assume responsibility. ”

“ This affair touches us as closely as it does your own government; this man had in his possession a letter of safe-conduct, which you will find in the accompanying dispatch case. It is of the regular form, as issued by this Chancellery, and is sealed with the Chancellery seal, or with a very exact counterfeit of it. However, it has been signed, as Chancellor of Prussia, with a signature indistinguishable from that of the Baron Stein, who is the present Prussian Minister of Agriculture. ”

“ The lord chancellor is in official rank the highest civil subject in the land outside the royal family, and takes precedence immediately after the archbishop of Canterbury. His functions have sometimes been exercised by a lord keeper of the great seal (see Lord Keeper) , the only real difference between the two offices being in the appointment of the keeper by mere delivery of the seal, while a lord chancellor receives letters patent along with it. He is by office a privy councillor, and it has long been the practice to make him a peer and also a cabinet minister. ”

“ Taken each by himself the plenipotentiaries represent their own individual states; taken as a whole the assembly represents a conglomeration of all the German states. It is the upholder of the sovereignty of the empire. If, then, the federal council already represents the whole empire, still more is this true of the general body of officials, constituted through appointment by the emperor although with a considerable amount of co-operation on the part of the federal council. The imperial chancellor is the responsible minister of the emperor for the whole of the empire. ”

“ He was, in fact, as Stubbs puts it, a sort of secretary of state for all departments. “This is he,” wrote John of Salisbury (d. 1180) , “who cancels (cancellat) the evil laws of the realm, and makes equitable (aequa) the commands of a pious prince,” a curious anticipation of the chancellor’s later equitable jurisdiction. Under Henry II., indeed, the chancellor was already largely employed in judicial work, either in attendance on the king or in provincial visitations; though the peculiar jurisdiction of the chancery was of later growth. ”

“ Few men have held more dignities than sir Thomas More, or have earned greater respect in the holding. Within eight years he was Under-Treasurer, or, as we should say, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Speaker of the House of Commons, and finally Lord Chancellor. Even dame Alice must have been satisfied; but her content only lasted three years, as by that time events had occurred which made it necessary either for sir Thomas to resign the Great Seal always entrusted to the lord chancellor, or else 'to tie his conscience to another man's back,' and that back the king's. ”

“ The title of chancellor has naturally been widely used in the German and Scandinavian states, and in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great. It has there as elsewhere wavered between being a political and a judicial office. ”

“ No such plenitude of power has ever before been enjoyed by any autocrat or dictator in any nation, ancient or modern, as is possessed under present democratic conditions in wealthy England by a Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose popularity makes him an indispensable member of a Cabinet. ”

“ The King was on his throne; but the Bishop of Winchester, his uncle, then Chancellor of England, opened the business of the session. On this, as on many similar occasions, the chancellor, generally a prelate, addressed the assembled states in an oration, half speech and half sermon, upon a passage of Scripture selected as a text. On the opening of this parliament, the chancellor informed the peers and the commons that the King's purpose in calling them together as the Great Council of the nation was threefold:—First, he was desirous of supporting the throne,—"his high and royal estate;" ”

“ Our Lord Chancellor has never done what other Lord Chancellors have done, viz., wielded the fierce democracy of the lower house, shone unrivalled on the parliamentary arena, thundered from the platform, won fame by their daring, and acumen, and learning, and eloquence, in every corner of the land. ”

“ Masters in Chancery, are the twelve assistants of the Chancellor or Lord Keeper, the first of whom is Master of the rolls, which is a place of great dignity, and is in the gift of the King. These gentlemen sit at Westminster hall, with the Lord Chancellor, three at a time while the term lasts, and two at a time when the Lord Chancellor sits to hear causes in his own house, and to them he often refers the farther hearing of causes ”

“ ARTICLE 55 The National Chancellor presides over the National Cabinet and conducts its affairs in accordance with rules of procedure, which will be framed by the National Cabinet and approved by the National President.
ARTICLE 56 The National Chancellor determines the general course of policy and assumes responsibility therefor to the National Assembly. In accordance with this general policy each National Minister conducts independently the particular affairs intrusted to him and is held individually responsible to the National Assembly. ”

“ A spectator at the law sessions of the Upper House is struck by the appearance of the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack, in wig and gown, listening to arguments, with two lay lords, like two lay figures, on the side benches, merely to constitute a quorum so as to legalize the decision of the Chancellor. ”

“ All eyes were fixed upon the spot where the Chancellor lay foundering. The top of the mizzen was the first to disappear, then followed the main-top; and soon, of what had been a noble vessel, not a vestige was to be seen. ”

“ Then the Archbishop of Rouen and William Marshall showed to the assembly the King's letter, by which it was ordered that if the chancellor did any foolish thing to the harm of the King or the realm, the said Archbishop of Rouen was to be appointed in his stead.... Therefore John the King's brother, and all the bishops and barons and the citizens of London, decided that the chancellor should be deposed from the government of the kingdom.... ”