The convention was settled without the need to legislate, but on the basis of that most sensible and British of ideals, the handshake. It worked until 1999, when most hereditary peers were removed from the Lords. Before then there had been other tweaks, and attempted revolutions. The 1949 Parliament Act reduced the delaying time from three to two years. The 1958 Life Peerages Act did what it said on the label, and enabled the creation of non-hereditary peerages for those other than law lords (who had long had them). This was widely hailed as breaking the old landed underpinning of the house of peers, but in fact that had gone long since: not since before the Great War had whether a man could maintain "the dignity of a peerage" – that is, have a stately home, acres and a huge private income – been any sort of consideration in the matter of whether he was awarded one. All the Life Peerages Act did was limit the usefully random nature of this part of the legislature, and encourage prime ministers to abuse patronage by putting utterly unsuitable people in the House, since the stakes were now lower.