The Star Chamber : its Practice and Procedure. 109 



them so trifling, even when judged by the Star Chamber's rules, 

 that had there not been vengeance to satisfy, much more than 

 a desire to prevent inconvenience to the State, the petitioners 

 could not have been sentenced to the dreadful punishments of 

 which they underwent the most ignominious part. The debate, 

 as reported by Bushworth, will well repay the labour of read- 

 ing it. The result of the debate was the appointment of a 

 committee, upon whom was laid the duty of examining into the 

 merits of the petitions. The petitioners were released from 

 the dungeons into which they had been flung by the patria 

 fotestas ; and Lord Andover, upon the report of the committee, 

 obtained leave to bring in his Bill for the abolition of the Star 

 Chamber. Either intentionally or ignorantly, probably the 

 former, he gave the go-bye to the fact that the Star Chamber 

 had existed before the statute of Henry VII., and taking that 

 statute for his standpoint, as the first which had recognized 

 the court at all, he proceeded to show how the authority con- 

 ferred by it had been abused. The House of Commons passed 

 the Bill, and sent it to the Upper House. Their lordships de- 

 sired a conference, and proposed that the Star Chamber, 

 instead of being abolished, should be once more restricted in 

 its operation to the statute of Henry VII. But the Commons 

 were determined to wipe out the blot altogether from the Con- 

 stitution, and after a slight resistance the Lords passed the 

 Bill. 



The 16 Charles I., c. 10, An Act for the Regulating the 

 Privy Council, and for talcing away the Court commonly 

 called the Star Chamber, recites a number of statutes relating 

 to the council, and the two statutes relating to the Star Cham- 

 ber, and with special reference to the 3 Henry VII., c. 1, 

 says, " But the said judges have not kept themselves to the 

 points limited by the said statute, but have undertaken to punish 

 where no law doth warrant, and to make decrees for things 

 having no such authority, and to inflict heavier punishments 

 than by any law is warranted" ; and because matters taken 

 before the Star Chamber can be taken in the ordinary course 

 of justice, elsewhere and by common law ; " and forasmuch as 

 the reasons and motives inducing the erection and continuing 

 of that court do now cease, and the proceedings, censures, and 

 decrees of that court have by an experience been found to be 

 an intolerable burden to the subjects, and the means to intro- 

 duce an arbitrary power and Government" ; and also because 

 of the mischievous meddling of the court in civil causes, 

 whereby "great and manifold mischiefs and inconveniences 

 have arisen and happened, and much uncertainty by means of 

 such proceedings hath been conceived concerning men's rights 

 and estates/' the Act goes on to abolish in the most sweeping 



