The Keeper of the Interval

The Sudermarkish mellvard, which our histories translate as ‘chancellor’, literally means ‘keeper of the interval’. The interval in question was the adjournment of parliament. A mellvard originally kept its correspondence and authorised expenditure already voted until the members returned. The early warrants specify payment for coal and the wages of clerks. I mention these humble particulars because Professor Hest maintains that the title always implied sovereign authority, a proposition which requires him to discover absolute monarchy in a receipt for stove fuel.

When parliament enlarged the office, its members understood themselves to be extending this familiar custody. Factories required contracts which outlasted a sitting; military procurement could scarcely await the return of gentlemen detained by flooded roads. Successive grants therefore permitted the mellvard to incur expenditure and issue binding directions ‘within the interval’. The fatal alteration appears in the standing order which made his certificate of completed business a condition of reconvening. I have compared the divisions with the surviving speeches: several members who opposed permanent executive powers supported this provision. They believed that an officer charged with completing their business could be trusted to report when he had done so. Their confidence deserves explanation, though scarcely the admiration accorded it by the official histories.

The interval consequently became something its keeper could prolong. Rearmament supplied unfinished business; the annexation of Drenne supplied considerably more. By the time parliament was dissolved and the thanedom proclaimed, the treasury and the regiments had long received their effective instructions from its absent chamber’s custodian. I do not suggest that a compound word conquered a kingdom; the orders required soldiers. The word does, however, explain how men could vote repeatedly for their own exclusion while believing that they were providing for the orderly continuation of their work. They had appointed a keeper of the interval and allowed him to determine whether the interval should ever end.