The Court of Star Chamber. Lord Bacon in speaking of the statute says that " the authority of the Star Cham ber, which before subsisted by the ancient common laws of the realm, was confirmed in certain cases by it." Stephen offers the conjecture that " the statute was meant to give an indisputable statutory authority to that part of the Star Chamber jurisdiction which appeared at the date of the statute most important, but that as it was found that the wider authority of the old court was acquiesced in, the statute fell into disuse. This conjecture is strengthened by the circumstance that the statute of Hen. VII. is silent as to the jurisdiction of the court over several offenses which at the end of the fifteenth century were comparatively of very little importance, but which in the sixteenth and the begin ning of the seventeenth century gave the court its principal value in the eyes of the government; of these, libels are the most important." Before the statute, the king and council did not admit any complaint except such as was preferred under circumstances ad mitting of a probability of its being sup ported : but now it was provided that besides the ancient authority of the council, three only of its members, namely, the chan cellor, treasurer and privy seal (taking to their assistance others thereby appointed), might hear and determine ordinarily the eight offenses enumerated, and that with out any manner of suggestion or surmise whatever. Some defects of this statute were supplied by the statute 21 Hen. VIII., c. 20, by which the president of the council was added to the former three principal officers. A doubt which arose upon the act, soon after passing it, whether the bishop, lord of Mr. Plowden, who very discreetly made his excuse at the Bar that Mr. Plowden's hand was first unto it, and that he supposed he might in anything follow St. Augustine. And although it were then overruled, yet Mr. Sergeant Richard son, thirty years later, fell again upon the same rock, and was sharply rebuked for the same."
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council, and justice were only assistants or had equal authority with the three great officers, was removed by this later act which declares that they were only there for their advice. Lastly the bill or information which by the former act was to be put in to the chancellor, was by the later to be put in generally, viz. to the king, as formerly. Thus by the operation of these two statutes, the above mentioned eight offenses, which before were mostly cognizable by indictment or action, might now be ar raigned and tried without any inquest or jury, on the bare examination either of witnesses or of the parties themselves. This innovation was devised, says the statute, because the common law did not satis factorily reach the offenders. However, the punishment to be inflicted was to be such as might be inflicted had the prosecution been at common law. Stephen says : — "The praises of trial by jury as a bulwark of individual liberty are a familiar topic. It is less commonly known, but it is certainly no less true, that the institution opened a wide door to tyranny and oppression by men of local influence over their poor neighbors. In feudal times the influence of a great land-owner over the persons who were returned as jurymen to the assizes was practically almost unlimited, and the system of indictment by a grand jury, which merely re ported on oath the rumors of the neighborhood, might, and no doubt often did, work cruel injustice. The offense which was long known to the law as maintenance or perverting justice by violence, by unlawful assemblies and conspira cies, was the commonest and most characteristic offense of the age. One of its commonest forms was the corruption and intimidation of jurors. Signal proof of this is supplied by the repeated legislation against this offense. The nature of the offense itself and the manner in which it was to be corrected by the Court of Star Chamber are fully described in the preambles and first section of the act." The alterations made as to these offenses by the statute consisted principally in the
