The Star Chamber : its Practice and Procedure. 105 



" by oath, covenant, or alliance, that each will aid and sustain 

 the other in falsely and maliciously indicting or causing to be 

 indicted, or in falsely acquitting, or in raising and maintaining 

 any false plea/' were to be deemed conspirators. The courts 

 of law, however, held that jurors were not within this defi- 

 nition, and the evil which the king and council intended to 

 remedy, remaining unabated, the sovereign arm was kept 

 stretched out until the evil having disappeared, while the 

 remedy grew ever more powerful, it became itsalf to be an 

 unbearable nuisance. But originally this was not so. Besides 

 taking notice of perjury in the common law courts, the Star 

 Chamber punished the same offence when committed in the 

 Ecclesiastical, Stannary, and Chancery courts. 



Riot included unlawful assemblies, forcible entries and de- 

 tainers, waylaying for the purpose of committing an assault, 

 assaults on privileged persons, and duels. These were, most 

 of them, common law offences, but were triable in the Star 

 Chamber by virtue of that extraordinary power which the 

 court arrogated to itself in the course of time, and which was 

 confirmed by 3 Henry VII. c. 1. With regard to duellists, 

 though at times they were severely punished, especially if there 

 had been any knavery in the arrangements for carrying out 

 the duel, at other times the punishment imposed on them 

 was no more than that the reprimand of the court should be 

 read by the judge of assize, on his next arrival in the neigh- 

 bourhood where the duel had taken place. 



Fraud included conveyances and gifts in order to defraud 

 creditors. Maintenance was not only the factious support 

 given by great men to their inferiors in order to enable them 

 to maintain their suits at law till the defendant, a person 

 inimical to the lord, was weary to pursue his right or was 

 ruined, but it included the meaner sins of pettifoggers whp 

 backed up a doubtful or a dirty case on the understanding that 

 costs should come out of the other side. 



Of the law of libel, which was moulded in the Star Cham- 

 ber, Hudson says, " In all ages libels have been severely 

 punished in this court, but most especially they began 

 to be frequent about the forty-second and forty-third of Eliza- 

 beth, when Sir E. Coke was her Attorney- General. In the 

 eye of the court a man was guilty of libel who " scoffed at the 

 person of another in rhyme or prose " ; if he personated him 

 "thereby to make him ridiculous"; if he annoyed him by 

 parading his effigy in a contemptuous manner ; " or by writ- 

 ing of some base or defamatory letter, and publishing the same 

 to others, or some scurvy love-letter to himself, whereby it is 

 not likely but he should be provoked to break the peace ; or 

 to publish disgraceful or false speeches against any eminent 



