Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/535

1922 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS 527 to traduce in public. But the story is probably true, and it is also probable that the earl was fined by the committee set up by the act of 1487. 1 It seems to follow that 3 Henry VII, c. 1, has no reference to the council in the star chamber except in so far as the committee it authorized contained five king's counsellors and exercised over misdemeanours in the king's household a jurisdiction which the council exercised over the same offences elsewhere. 2 How long this committee continued to act is uncertain ; except in the statute-book there are few traces of its existence. In 1504 3 parliament complains that so far as the punishment for giving liveries and keeping retainers is concerned ' lityll or nothing is or hath be doon ', and proceeds in an elaborate act to enable either the chancellor in the star chamber, the king in his bench, or the council attendant to examine offenders by oath or other- wise, 4 while the chancellor in the star chamber and the council attendant, provided three counsellors are present and that two of them are lords spiritual or temporal, are further enabled to proceed without any suit or information. None of these tribunals corresponds with the committee of 1487. Possibly it had done its work and purged the king's household ; more probably its inactivity after Morton's death in 1500 was due to the feebler hands of Deane and War ham, into which the Great Seal fell. However that may be, the council in the star chamber con- tinued to deal with all the misdemeanours mentioned in 3 Henry VII, c. 1, and many others as well, without regarding the pre- scriptions of that act. Hudson is specific in his assertion, 5 which 1 The story has not been traced beyond Bacon ; but Henry VII certainly visited the earl for some days in 1498 (see Bentley, Excerpta Historica, p. 119). He may not, of course, have been fined in any court at all. One of the motives for the huge fines imposed in the star chamber was ' quoad terrorem magnatum ', to induce offenders to compound with the king without being brought into court ; and, according to Bacon, what Henry VII said to the earl was ' my attorney must speak with you '. 2 It might alternatively be suggested that the committee of 1487 was a department of chancery. The chancellor exercised a common law as well as an equitable juris- diction, and since the king's bench was more given to dealing with treasons and felonies than with misdemeanours, the chancellor may have stepped in to supply the deficiency. Certainly misdemeanours were occasionally ' reformed ' in chancery as late as 1603 (Lambarde, Reports in Chancery, 1650, p. 30) ; bills were by 3 Henry VII, c. 1, to be put to the chancellor, and some, so addressed, survive (e. g. Leadam, Star Chamber Cases, ii. 118, 122, 142, 178, 184, 285). Stat. 33 Henry VIII, c. 1, moreover, refers to offenders alternately ' convicte by witnesses taken before the Lorde Chauncelor of Englande or by examination of witnesses or confession taken in the Starr Chamber at Westm. before the Kinges most honorable counsell '. 3 19 Henry VII, c. 18. This act was, however, to last during the king's life 'and no longer'. 4 From Coke downwards it has been persistently stated that the star chamber derived its power to examine on oath from 3 Henry VII, c. 1. Apart from its doubtful association with the star chamber, that act says nothing about an oath. 5 Collectanea luridica, ii. 23.