Star Chamber
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Star Chamber. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
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 jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, where effected by means of peculiar tube-like the king chose to remit the capital sentence. The form of proceeding was by written information and interrogatories, except when the accused person confessed. Regardless of the existing rule that the 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, imprisonment, and mutilation inflicted on a mere oral proceeding, without hearing the accused, by a court consisting of the immediate representatives of prerogative. In 1641 a bill was carried in both Houses which decreed the abolition of the Star Chamber and the equally unpopular High Commission Court.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
in English history, a court of no little importance. Its sessions were held originally in a hall council chamber in the palace of Westminster, the ceiling of which was decorated with gilt stars. The court of the Star Chamber was authorized by Parliament during the reign of Henry VII . It became powerful under Henry VIII and Elizabeth. It was composed of members of the king's privy council . Its proceedings were exempt from the ordinary rules of courts of law. Originally it was a special tribunal called by the English sovereign to consider crimes and criminals beyond the reach of ordinary modes of court procedure. In case a nobleman were too powerful to be tried in open court, his offense was considered and his punishment decided upon in the Star Chamber. The court had no jury, and it did not have authority to pass sentence of death, but pardons were issued and heavy fines imposed. Property was confiscated. Instances are not wanting in which offenders were sentenced to loss of their ears, or were set in the pillory. The Star Chamber was never popular with the English people. It was considered an infringement of the right of trial by a jury composed of one's peers. It was abolished by an act of the Long Parliament in 1641 in the reign of Charles I. See Privy Council