Star Chamber
a British tribunal which met in the old council chamber of the palace of Westminster, and is said to have received its name from the roof of that apartment being decorated with gilt stars, or because in it "starres" or Jewish bonds had been kept. It is supposed to have originated in early times out of the exercise of jurisdiction by the king's council, whose powers in this respect had greatly declined when in 1487 Henry VII., anxious to repress the indolence and illegal exactions of powerful landowners, revived and remodelled them, or, according to some investigators, instituted what was practically an entirely new tribunal. The statute conferred on the Chancellor, the Treasurer, and the Keeper of the Privy Seal, with the assistance of a bishop and a temporal Lord of the Council, and Chief-justices, or two other justices in their absence, a jurisdiction to punish, without a jury, the misdemeanors of sheriffs and juries, as well as riots and unlawful assemblies. Henry VIII. added to the other members of the court the president of the Council, and ultimately all the privy-councillors were members of it.
The civil jurisdiction of the Star Chamber comprised controversies between English and foreign merchants, testamentary causes, disputes between the heads and commonalty of corporations, lay and ecclesiastical, and claims to deodands. As a criminal court it could inflict any punishment short of death, and had cognizance of forgery, perjury, riots, maintenance, fraud, libels, conspiracy, etc. Treason, murder, and felony could be brought under the STAR CHAMBER under surface of the arms. The nervous jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, where effected by means of peculiar tube-like except when the accused person contence. The form of proceeding was by written information and interrogatories, except when the accused person confessed. strained, pressure of every kind, includthe confession must be free and unconstrained, pressure of every kind, including torture, was used to procure acknowledgments of guilt; admissions of the most immaterial facts were construed into confessions; and fine, imprisonoral proceeding, without hearing the accused, by a court consisting of the imoral proceeding, without hearing the accused, by a court consisting of the im- In 1641 a bill was carried in both Houses which decreed the abolition of the Star High Commission Court.
High Commission Court.
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