The Speaker is the First Commoner of the Realm, according to an Act of Parliament passed in 1688 (1 William and Mary, c. 21) after the Revolution. It provided that the Speaker’s place in the order of precedence is next after the peers of the Realm. In 1919 the Speaker was raised a great many steps in the scale. By an Order in Council issued by King George V it was ordained that he “shall have, hold and enjoy place, pre-eminence and precedence, immediately after the Lord President of the Council,” which makes him the seventh subject of the Realm. The order is: Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of York, Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Lord President of the Council, the Speaker. The Speakership is one of the highest prizes of political ambition. In dignity and importance it is next, perhaps, to the office of Prime Minister. Four Speakers have resigned in order to become Prime Ministers. One of them, Henry Addington, after being Speaker for twelve years, was summoned by George III, in 1801, to form an Administration in succession to Pitt’s, which failed to complete its Irish policy at the Union, owing to the King’s rooted objection to Catholic emancipation. The only position for which the Speakership would be relinquished is certainly that of Prime Minister. Sir John Freeman-Mitford, who followed Addington in the Chair, resigned after a year’s service in order to become Lord Chancellor of Ireland; but he did so only at the earnest solicitation of the King and the solatium of a salary of £10,000 per year and a peerage as Lord Redesdale. The Lord Chancellorship of Ireland is a high and honourable position, but it is unlikely that anyone would now give up the Speakership of the House of Commons for it. Charles Abbot resigned the Chief Secretaryship for Ireland—a post of greater political importance than that of the Lord Chancellorship—in order to succeed Freeman-Mitford as Speaker in 1802. Abbot refused the offer of a Secretaryship of State from Perceval, the Prime Minister, in 1809 during his occupancy of the Chair; and Manners-Sutton could have been Home Secretary in the Administration formed in 1827 by Canning, but he did not think it good enough.