It was thought the Lower House needed more room for their assembly. Sir Christopher Wren was consulted on the subject; but “any carpenter in the town understood that matter as well as he, and I would undertake,” said the impatient Archdeacon, “to bring one that should contrive seats to hold near six score, which is more than ever yet met at once.”[349] [Sidenote: 1702.] Christmas festivities had scarcely ended, holly branches still hung in the parish churches, when the new Convocation met. The day before New Years’ Day, after a Latin service read by the Bishop of Oxford, a Latin sermon preached by the Dean of St. Paul’s, and the King’s writ and the Bishop of London’s certificate formally delivered, “the Archbishop admonished the Clergy to retire into the chapel, at the west end of the church, where morning prayers are usually said, and there, under the conduct of the Dean of St. Paul’s, to choose a Prolocutor, and present him in Henry the VII.’s Chapel, on Tuesday, the 13th of January.”[350] No sooner had they met for that purpose, than the old embers of strife were kindled afresh, and blazed up furiously as before. The first contention pertained to proxy votes, the Dean of Canterbury contending they were valid, others answering they were quite contrary to custom, and indeed, that absent members were guilty of contumacy till their absence received judicial excuse, and therefore lay under a canonical impediment,[351] which for the time deprived them of their ecclesiastical power. The election of Prolocutor was the next struggle. Even such a candidate as Beveridge, decided Anglican as he was, could not satisfy the extreme party, and they elected, by a majority of 36 or 37 against 30, the Dean of Salisbury, Dr. Woodward, a civilian who had grown popular with High Churchmen by opposing his Diocesan. At that very moment, the two were engaged in litigation with each other; and, in addition to this circumstance, which rendered the election unseemly, the fact should be remembered that Woodward, now a sharp thorn in the sides of Burnet, owed to that Prelate his church preferment. The election over, the new Prolocutor approached the chair occupied by the Dean of St. Paul’s as temporary president whilst the votes were being taken; but the Dean kept possession of his seat, on the ground that the Prolocutor could not preside when as yet there was no House. The Prolocutor being duly presented to the Archbishop, on the 13th of January he made a speech, bristling with military allusions. [Sidenote: CONVOCATION.]