Before the throne are three wool-sacks, or broad seats stuffed with wool, to put the Legislature in mind, it is said, that the right management of this trade is of the last importance to the kingdom. On the first of these wool-sacks, next to the throne, sits the Lord Chancellor, or Keeper, who is Speaker of the House of Peers; and on the other two, the Lord Chief Justices and the rest of the judges, with the Master of the Rolls, and the other Masters in Chancery: about the middle of the house, on the east side, is a chimney, where a fire is usually kept in the winter; and towards the north, or lower end of the house, is a bar that runs across it, to which the commons advance when they bring up bills or impeachments, or when the King sends for them, and without this bar the council and witnesses stand at trials before the peers. The house is at present hung with tapestry, containing the history of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, anno 1588. The house or chamber where the commons assemble is to the northward of the House of Lords, and stands east and west, as the other does north and south. The room is pretty near square, and towards the upper end is the Speaker’s armed chair, to which he ascends by a step or two; before it is a table where the clerks sit, on which the mace lies when the Speaker is in the chair, and at other times the mace is laid under the table. On the north and south sides, and at the west end, are seats gradually ascending as in a theatre, and between the seats at the west end is the entrance by a pair of folding-doors. There are galleries also on the north, south, and west, where strangers are frequently admitted to hear the debates. This room was anciently a chapel, founded by King Stephen about the year 1141, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin; however, it obtained the name of St. Stephen’s Chapel. It was rebuilt by King Edward III., anno 1347, who placed in it a dean, twelve secular canons, thirteen vicars, four clerks, five choristers, a verger, and a keeper of the chapel, and built them a convent, which extended along the Thames, endowing it with large revenues, which at the dissolution of monasteries in the reign of Edward VI. amounted to near eleven thousand pounds per annum. Almost ever since the dissolution, this chapel has been converted to the use we find it at present, viz., for the session of the Lower House of Parliament, who, before that time, usually assembled in the chapter-house belonging to the Abbey, when the Parliament met at Westminster. The Painted Chamber lies between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and here the committees of both houses usually meet at a conference; but neither this nor the other remaining apartments of this Palace of Westminster have anything in them that merit a particular description.