SYMBOLS OF OFFICE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5461, 14 August 1929, Page 4

SYMBOLS OF OFFICE.

MINISTERS AND THEIR SEALS. When Ministers of the Home Govj vernment resign office and the new Prime Minister is ready wi£h his new Cabinet, the outgoing .Ministers appear before the King in Council and deliver to him the Seals of Office, which are then at a second Council handed by His Majesty to the incoming Ministers. Among these symbols of office the most noteworthy is the Great Seal, held by the Lord Chancellor, and it is timely to recall that the finest specimen of the Great Seal ever cut was made by a Yorkshireman—Thomas Simon. He received orders to make the Great Seal in 1648, 1651, 1654, and 1661 —working for Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles 11. That was a period during which the demand for new Great Seals was extraordinarily active. In ordinary times the Great Seal remains unchanged throughout' a reign, being replaced only on the death of the monarch or on the occasion of any change in arms or style, such as occured on the creation of the Irish Free State, when Mr Percy 'Metcalfe .was commissioned to design a new one. After a new Great Seal is made, the old one is solemnly broken up, defaced, or “damasked” by the King in Council striking it a blow with a hammer, and is thereafter a perquisite of the Lord Chancellor then in office. Twice in the past hundred years there have been disputes over whom was' entitled to it. The first was between Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brotigham on the accession of William, IV ; the second in 1859 when a new'Great Seal was m course of making at the time Lord Campbell succeeded Lord Chelmsford as. Lord Chancellor. On the first occasion William IV had the Great Seal divided in two, each bearing one face, and had each half inserted into a silver salver, giving one to each disputant.