the.com/lord chancellor
Britain's top legal officer, invented in the 600s, still can't be defined in one job description.
means A senior UK government official whose job has historically mashed together the roles of top judge, speaker of the House of Lords, cabinet minister, and keeper of the Great Seal, all at once.
from Traces back to Anglo-Saxon England, where a 'chancellor' (from Latin cancellarius, originally a court usher who stood at the cancelli, the lattice screen separating judges from petitioners) kept records and wrote royal documents. Over thirteen-plus centuries the office absorbed more and more power — judicial, ecclesiastical, political — until it became the ancient hybrid still puzzling job-description writers today. The 2005 Constitutional Reform Act finally stripped away its judicial functions, though the title, and the confusion, endure.
- keeper of
- the actual physical Great Seal of England
- thomas more
- held the job, lost his head anyway
- 2005 shake-up
- stripped of judicial powers to satisfy separation of powers
- oldest office
- older than the office of prime minister itself