Magnus Orrel

Magnus Orrel was a Schwartzistani statesman who served as Grand Chancellor of The Grand Chancellery from 31 December 1845 to 13 February 1853. He is remembered chiefly as the author of the Act of Unyear, the measure by which the Assembly struck a year from the record of the calendar, and for the remark attributed to him in the debate that preceded it, that "a year is a matter of record." His likeness survives chiefly in the official portraits of the chancellery, which show a gaunt man with a high forehead and spectacles, the latter removed, by his evident instruction, whenever he sat for the painter.

Early life

Magnus Orrel was born on 8 April 1790 at Vellmar, in The Capital District. The record is silent as to his parentage, his schooling, and the whole of his career before his election to the chancellorship in 1845, at which date he was fifty-five years of age. No relations are recorded for him in the register.

Career

Orrel was elected Grand Chancellor by the Assembly on 31 December 1845, in a sitting held at The Assembly Hall. He took office the same day. The chancellery's own list of holders of the office records the tenure as running from 31 December 1845 to 13 February 1853 (list of chancellors).

The principal act of his chancellorship was the Act of Unyear, which he brought before the Assembly and which passed on 2 January 1847 by a vote of fifty-eight to nought, with no member recorded against it. The Act created the Ministry of Chronology to enforce its terms and allowed ninety days for the surrender of all records falling within its scope. Orrel is named in the Assembly's own record as the proposer of the measure. Of his conduct of the chancellery in the years following, and of the circumstances of his leaving office on 13 February 1853, the record preserved in this encyclopedia says nothing further.

• 31 December 1845, The Assembly Hall: Magnus Orrel is elected Grand Chancellor by the Assembly and takes office. Report.
• 2 January 1847, The Assembly Hall: The Assembly passes the Act of Unyear, 58 to 0, as proposed by Orrel. The Ministry of Chronology is created to enforce it, and ninety days are given for the surrender of all records. Report.

Later life

Orrel left the chancellorship on 13 February 1853. The record contains no notice of his activities between that date and his death, on 14 October 1867, at the age of seventy-seven. Neither the place nor the circumstances of his death are given in the register consulted for this entry.

Family

No relations are recorded for Magnus Orrel.

Legacy

Orrel's name is attached, in the chancellery's own usage and in the schoolbooks that followed it, to the Act of Unyear alone. The phrase given to him in the Assembly debate, that "a year is a matter of record," is reproduced in the Act's preamble and continues to be cited by the Ministry of Chronology in its own literature. His portraits, in which he is shown without the spectacles that the sitters' accounts otherwise describe him as never removing, are held by the chancellery.