You find all sorts of neat things in law dictionaries...

Suppose a member of Congress wants to resign to, say become a lobbyist for a drug company. What does he or she do? Send in a letter of resignation, of course.

In England, nothing is that easy. MPs are technically not allowed to resign from their posts. So what does an MP do? Ask the Queen to appoint him to be the Steward of Her Majesty's Three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in the county of Buckingham, of course. Upon taking this purely nominal royal appointment, the MP then cannot simultaneously serve in Parliament, so his or her seat is forfeited. Then the MP resigns from the royal post.