woolsack
(ˈwʊlsæk)
[f. wool n. + sack n.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⊇ 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 Shakes. 1 Hen. IV, ii. iv. 148. |
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 n.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 upon 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 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 empty 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 wool⁓sacks. 1862 M. E. 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. |