“HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 207* 
was valid against them. At what period the jurisdiction of the coun- 
cil or star chamber* fell into disuetude, is a circumstance encum- 
bered with some doubt. So early as the reign of Edward III. the 
parliament denounced its jurisdiction as contrary to Magna Charta 
and the known laws, and often directed to serve the most criminal 
views of ambition and avarice, sometimes in the clergy, and some- 
times in the monarch, to whose iniquitous views it was made acces- 
sary. From all this being done, we are not surprised that under 
Richard II. it became the policy of the Commons to check and mo- 
dify the extraordinary powers of the council, which at last, under the 
Lancastrian kings, was in some degree accomplished; and about 
that period, perhaps, the concilium ordinarium, the king’s ordinary 
council, began to assume the forms of the concilium secretum, or 
privy council of state. But to suppose, with Collier, that the latter 
body, which, under the Tudors, so often potently interfered to de- 
prive the subject, to his grievous discontent, of that most precious 
of rights, the trial by peers, could not remove a lord chancellor 
from his office, on the ground of its being hereditary, is plainly to 
form a very erroneous judgment on this question. 
Those who are conversant with our early parliamentary constitu- 
tion, and who recollect by what slow degrees the fabric of English 
liberty was reared, and for how long a period parliaments were used 
for no other purposes than as efficient and willing instruments in car- 
* Blackstone, in alluding to the origin of the star chamber, specifies those 
abuses and oppressions connected with it, which so justly made it the object 
of hatred to the subject. “The star chamber was a court of very ancient 
original, but new modelled by statutes 3° Hen. vii, ch.i, and 21° Hen. viii, 
ch. 20, consisting of divers lords, spiritual and temporal, being privy coun- 
cillors, together with two judges of the courts of common law, without the 
interyention of any jury. Their jurisdiction extended legally over riots, 
perjury, misbehaviour of sheriffs, and other notorious misdemeanors, contrary 
to the laws of the land. Yet this was afterwards, as Lord Clarendon informs 
us, stretched to the asserting of all proclamations and orders of state ; to the 
vindicating of illegal commissions, and grants of monopolies; holding for 
honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited, and becom- 
ing both a court of law to determine civil rights, and a court of revenue to 
enrich the treasury : the (privy) council table, by proclamations, enjoining 
to the people that which was not enjoined by the laws, and prohibiting that 
which was not prohibited ; and the star chamber, which consisted of the same 
persons in different rooms, censuring the breach and disobedience to those 
proclamations by very great fines, imprisonments, and corporal severities ; so 
that any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in 
no time more penal, and the foundations of right never more in danger to be 
destroyed.”—Commentaries, vol. iv, chap. 19. 
