House of the Sealords
The House of the Sealords was the legislature of the Region of the Isles, the island region of the Commonwealth of Hamland that is today the Isles of Caputia in Nouvelle Alexandrie. Seated at Ersoy in Taeland, it legislated for the region alongside the Lord of the Isles and was the direct forerunner of the modern Congress of the Isles.
Name and origins
The chamber took its name from the pre-democratic order of Sea Lords, the oligarchy that had governed the islands before the coming of representative government. In an age when much of the wealth of Taeland was drawn from piracy, the most powerful of these lords met to agree rules and settle affairs among themselves, and the assembly that succeeded them kept their name.[1] The tradition was native to both Hamland and Taeland, and the House preserved it into the Commonwealth period as the seat of the region's government.[1]
Composition
In its later form the House seated 201 members, drawn from the three constituencies of the region: the Iridian lands, Kydros, and the Liberty Islands.[1][2] Its members were returned at elections held on the same cycle as those of the wider Commonwealth, and the largest party in the chamber furnished the Lord of the Isles, who served as head of the regional government.[2] Through most of the Commonwealth period the House was dominated by the Social Liberal Party.[2]
Powers and legislation
The House governed the region by Lordship Decree, the instrument through which it and the Lord of the Isles enacted law for the islands.[2] Its decrees reached across the ordinary business of regional government, among them measures on policing, refugees, and the national parks, and it passed its own electoral and constitutional reforms.[2] Among its enactments was the adoption of the Tae language as an official language of the islands, a status the tongue retained by inherited decree; the measure was set down in the Tae-accented Hammish of the day.
Legacy
The institutions of the Region of the Isles did not survive the region's passage into Nouvelle Alexandrie unchanged. On the region's admission to the Federation its government was reconstituted on the common regional pattern set by the Regional and Local Government Organization Act, 1699, under which the unicameral Congress of the Isles took the place of the House of the Sealords and an elected Regional Governor that of the Lord of the Isles.[3] Neither Ersoy nor the wider Taeland island lies within the modern region, and the House survives only in the region's history and in the name its successor chamber recalls.[3]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Isles of Caputia, Region of the Isles.
- ^ a b c d e Region of the Isles.
- ^ a b Isles of Caputia, Politics.
