The Star Chamber : its Practice and Procedure, 99 



demeaning of sheriffs in making of panels, and other untrue 

 returns, by taking of money by juries, by great riots and 

 unlawful assemblies, the policy and good rule of this realm is 

 almost subdued"; and then goes on to ordain that "the 

 Chancellor and Treasurer of England for the time being, and 

 the Keeper of the King's Privy Seal, or two of them, calling 

 to them a bishop and a temporal lord of the King's most 

 honourable Council, and the two Chief Justices of the King's 

 Bench and Common Pleas for the time being, or other two 

 justices in their absence, upon bill or information put to the 

 said Chancellor for the king, or any other, against any person 

 for any misbehaving afore rehearsed, have authority to call 

 before them, by writ or privy seal, the said misdoers ; and 

 them and others by their discretions to whom the truth may be 

 known to examine ; and such as they find therein defective, 

 to punish them after their demerits, after the form and effect 

 of statutes thereof made in like manner and form as they 

 should and ought to be punished if they were thereof convict 

 after the due order of the law." 



The reasons why such a court as the Star Chamber should 

 exist, and the sort of authority Parliament intended to give it, 

 are thus set forth, at the same time that it is evident the 

 power conferred by the act is given to a court already in exist- 

 ence, and specially described as "the Court of Star Chamber." 

 Lord Bacon, writing of the Star Chamber, says : " This court 

 is one of the sagest and noblest institutions of this kingdom. 

 For in the distribution of courts of ordinary justice, besides 

 the High Court of Parliament, in which distribution the King's 

 Bench holdeth the pleas of the crown, the Common Pleas pleas 

 civil, the Exchequer pleas concerning the king's revenue, and 

 the Chancery the pretorian power for mitigating the rigour of 

 law, in case of extremity, by the conscience of a good man ; 

 there was, nevertheless, always reserved a high and pre- 

 eminent power to the King's Council in causes that might, in 

 example or consequence, concern the state of the common- 

 wealth, which, if they were criminal, the council used to sit in 

 the chamber called the Star Chamber; if civil in the White 

 Chamber, or Whitehall. And as the Chancery had the pre- 

 torian power for equity, so the Star Chamber had the censorian 

 power for offences under the degree of capital. This court of 

 Star Chamber is composed of good elements, for it consisteth 

 of four kinds of persons — counsellors, peers, prelates, and 

 chief judges. It discerneth also principally of four kinds of 

 causes — forces, frauds, crimes various of stellionate, and the 

 inchoations or middle acts towards crimes capital or heinous, 

 not actually committed or perpetrated. But that which was 

 principally aimed at by this act was force, and the two chief 



