Lord Chancellor of Elland
The Lord Chancellor of Elland is the senior officer of government in the kingdom of Elland, and in terms of overall political power ranks technically second only to the king in that country. While the Ellish monarchy continues to hold substantial executive powers in the modern day, the historically strong influence of parliaments in the Sabamic lands – to which Elland belonged for extended periods in the first and early second millennia CE – have created a position under which the Lord Chancellor, while officially merely the most senior of the king’s counsellors, holds significant executive power in his own right and has been a counterweight to royal power for most of the history of Elland as a distinct polity.
For much of its history the office was appointive and in the gift of the king, a position which at times created difficulties as the king and his Lord Chancellor sought to impose their authority on a parliament which was loth to accept it; however, by the turn of the 19th century this had become the current position by which the Lord Chancellor is chosen initially by the parliament itself before it recommends its choice to the king. The Lord Chancellor is usually the leader of the largest parliamentary faction, although this is by no means mandatory; neither is the king obliged to accept the person proposed to the role, although this veto has only been exercised once, by Peter III in 1875, and it is usual for off-stage negotiations to be carried out, if needed, to ensure that the eventual appointment is a formality.
Historic development
The title of chancellor is derived from practices of the Second Sabāmani Empire, in which the holders were officials of the empire’s courts; the first recorded use in Elland appears to be from a description of the Catharian court of the late first century CE, at which time it seems to indicate a position in charge of the royal household. In this respect it was adopted by several of the Ellish states, and it was carried over when William I established the modern kingdom of Elland in 1479. At this time the office carried no specific responsibilities outside the court, and while the Lord Chancellor (a title first attested to in court papers dating to 1503) was a member of the king’s advisory council, this was effectively “chaired” by the king himself on those occasions when it met.
The first Lord Chancellor to assume a role analogous to that of chief advisor was Roger de Brus, earl of Vardham (in office 1565–76), who served Richard I in that capacity; Brus functioned in most practical respects as regent on behalf of Richard’s brother and successor Timothy, who was terminally ill for most of his two-month reign as king, alongside Timothy’s brother and successor Henry I. However, the expansion of powers of the Lord Chancellor to their present extent almost certainly began with Alban Osterley, duke of Cottesmore, whose pivotal role at the court of Stephen I and his son and successor Stephen II can be said in some ways to have helped to shape the future of both the kingdom and central Messenia more generally during the period from 1620 to 1640.
The gradual growth in stature of the Parliament of Elland prompted further increase in significance of the role of Lord Chancellor. Henry Osterley de Bain, cousin of King Henry III, son of the previous king Henry II and one of the king’s closest allies and confidants during a turbulent reign, was the first holder of the office to explicitly act as spokesman for the Parliament and intermediary between it and the monarch, and was the chief architect of the current structure of the parliament in which its membership is divided between “sustaining” or voting members and “observing” or non-voting members. Protocols put in place by the Earl of Vaisey and modified by his successor, the Duke of Stoke Peverell, in the later 18th and early 19th centuries effectively set those changes in stone; and Stoke Peverell was probably the first Lord Chancellor whose fitness for the post was determined initially by the parliament itself, rather than by the king. Certainly, successive Lord Chancellors during Richard II’s near-half century on the throne were given a much freer hand in combating the disaffected magnates who ran their own fiefs largely independently from Etherley during the 1830s and 1840s.
With the reining-in of the magnates during the early reign of Peter III in the 1850s, the Lord Chancellorship settled into a close approximation of its present status under the aegis of the Viscount Athenley, and it has continued more-or-less unimpeded to the present. However, the office remained the preserve of the great houses of Elland until much more recent times, with the first Lord Chancellor from outside these ranks being Albert Foulsham, who had no title when he assumed the office in 1935 and was given the title of Baron of Austrey, his home town south of Etherley.