Out of this income he is expected to entertain, and invitations to the "Speaker's Dinners" have come to be looked upon as one of the minor delights of membership. During the eighteenth century the Speaker was in the habit of giving evening parties and official dinners on the Saturdays and Sundays of the session.[201] Speaker Abbot, in his Diary, describes one of these dinners at which twenty guests were entertained. "The style of the dinner was soup at the top and bottom, changed for fish, and afterwards changed for roast saddle of mutton and roast loin of veal." The wine was champagne, Hock, Hermitage, and (which sounds unpleasant) iced Burgundy.[202] His successors have always continued the practice of holding regular weekly entertainments of a social character, at which the members attend in levée dress, and it is doubtful whether any guest to-day would follow the example of Cobbett, who declined an invitation to dine with Speaker Manners Sutton on the grounds that he was "not accustomed to the society of gentlemen."[203]
In old days, as we have seen, the Speakership was often a stepping-stone to some higher appointment. Sir Thomas More, "the first English gentleman who signalized himself as an orator; the first writer of prose (as Townsend calls him) which is still intelligible"[204]—whatever that may mean—was also the first lay Chancellor of England. It was not considered strange for the Speaker to hold some ministerial appointment both while he sat in the Chair and after his retirement. Sir Edward Coke was Solicitor-General as well as Speaker; Harley occupied the office of Secretary of State and the Chair simultaneously. Spencer Compton was Paymaster-General as well as Speaker, and, as Lord Wilmington, became Prime Minister in 1742. Nor was he the only Speaker to exchange the Chair for the Premiership. Addington succeeded Pitt in that office in 1801; Grenville became Prime Minister in the Government of "All the Talents," five years later; and Manners Sutton is said to have been urged by the Duke of Wellington to form a Ministry in 1831-2.[205]
Nowadays, when a Speaker finally relinquishes the Chair, it would be considered derogatory to his dignity for him to reappear in the House as a simple member of Parliament. Addington did so, but soon realized the difficulty of his position, and requested that he might be elevated to the House of Lords.
It has long been the custom for the Commons to ask the Crown to recognize in a material fashion the services of a retiring Speaker. He is allowed a pension of £4000 a year, and, ever since the retirement of Abbot in 1817, a peerage of the rank of a viscountcy has been conferred upon him.
Placed in a position of extraordinary trust, hedged about with the lofty traditions of his office, weighed down by heavy responsibilities, engaged in a sedentary occupation during the greater part of the day or night, a Speaker may well agree with that candid correspondent who, in congratulating Addington on his elevation to the Chair in 1789, referred to the Speakership as "one of the most awful posts I know."[206]
In the long list of those who have so ably guided and controlled the proceedings of the House of Commons during the last hundred years, many names stand forth conspicuously—Manners Sutton, Shaw Lefevre, Denison, Brand, Peel. No Speaker has ever fallen short of the trust reposed in him, or failed in his duty to the House, and it may confidently be asserted that so long as the standard of English political life maintains its present high level, no difficulty will ever be experienced in providing the Chair with an occupant who shall fill it, not only worthily, but with distinction.