The Star Chamber : its Practice and Procedure. 107 



price ; spreaders of false news ; entanglers of young men in 

 money difficulties ; invokers of evil spirits. Favouritism by 

 sheriffs, troublesome behaviour on the part of members of 

 guilds, misconduct of privy councillors, abuse of authority by 

 officials — as when Latcher and Skinner whipped Mrs. Nevill 

 in Bridewell — Were all punished in the Star Chamber; "in a 

 word, there is no offence punishable by any law, but if the court 

 find it to grow in the Commonwealth, this court may lawfully 

 punish it, except only where life is questioned." 



Arrests were made under a privy seal, or on the warrant of 

 the board. Summonses were issued by the same authority. The 

 accused was privately examined, and encouraged to confess 

 and submit himself to the mercy of the court, whereby he often 

 met a lighter sentence than if the law were allowed to run its 

 ordinary course with him. u But in all these cases this is a 

 court rather of mercy than of justice, for if those capital offences 

 should be proceeded against capitally, then must men be tried 

 by course of indictment by their peers per legem terraz" (Hud- 

 son). If the prisoner confessed, his admission was written 

 down, and shown to him when he was brought to the bar, and 

 then if he recognized it, sentence was passed according to the 

 discretion of the court ; if he denied it, witnesses were called 

 to prove it, and Hudson says that in such cases the court in 

 his time often strained the confession unfairly against the pri- 

 soner. There was no jury, and the court needed not to be 

 unanimous. The president had a casting vote. 



Concerning punishments, Hudson says they are ' ' now of 

 late imposed secundum qualitatem delicti, and not fitted to the 

 estate of the person so that they are rather in terror em jpojpuli 

 than for the true end for which they were intended." If this 

 was true of Hudson's time, it was much more true of the time 

 of the next and last generation of practitioners in the Star Cham- 

 ber. The fines imposed by the court in Charles the First's reign 

 were so wildly extravagant that they defeated the object of the 

 imposers, unless, as was the case with the last judgments pro- 

 nounced by the Star Chamber, the intention was to imprison 

 indefinitely as well as to ruin irretrievably. Imprisonments 

 were ordered in the Fleet, in the Tower, and formerly in the 

 Marshalsea. Loss of ears was the lot of " perjured persons, 

 infamous libellers, scandalors of the state, and such like/'' Brand- 

 ing in the face and slitting the nose were the punishments of 

 forgers of false deeds, conspirators to take away the life of in- 

 nocents, false scandal upon the judges, and first personages of 

 the realm." Whipping was used in " great deceits," and in 

 cases where " a clamorous person in forma pauperis prose- 

 cuteth another falsely, and is not able to pay him his costs." 

 There was also the punishment of " wearing papers," which, 



