THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER. By John U. Lindsay. IV.
IN a general way the function of the court as a criminal .tribunal was to try cases of misdemeanor, which were not, or were supposed not to be, sufficiently recognized or punished by the common law. Bacon mentions the following offences as within its cognizance : " Forces, frauds, crimes various of stellionate, and the inchoation or middle acts towards crimes capital or heinous, not actually committed or perpetrated."' They are thus enumerated by Hudson : "Forgery, perjury, riot, maintenance, fraud, libelling, and conspiracy," Besides this he ascribes to the court power to punish of fences not defined or punishable at common law, and he mentions instances where jurisdiction was conferred on the court by statutes long since fqrgotten. , In an interesting work on the Star Chamber, which it is my good fortune to possess,2 the author thus enumerates the causes properly belonging to its cognizance : "Unlawful assemblies, Routs, Riots, For geries, Perjuries, Cozoanages, Libelling, and other like misdemeanors not especially provided for by the statutes." His definitions of the offences of unlawful assembly, rout and riot, are substantially
! the same as the modern conception of those ' crimes at common law. I "Forgery," he says, " is a falsehood com j mitted in or about some writing or Deed : as if a man write or signe a false Testament, or falsely set downe therein some Legacie, or trust in himselfe; or if he make a Deed, or Accompt, or other Instrument; or if he bribe or corrupt a page, or doe raze, change or corrupt any writ ing, to the defrauding of another man, or doe convey, remove, or take away, suppresse, conceale, or falsely signe a Testament or counterfeit another man's hand in writing, or counterfeit the hands of Magistrates, and Certificates, Testi monials, or Licenses in their names, or corrupt or subborne false witnesses, or make false ac compt or reckoning. West. part. 2. Symbol, tract at. Indictments, Sect. 60.
1 Referring to the general authority of the king's council, he says: "There was nevertheless always reserved a high and pre-eminent power to the king's council in causes that might in example or consequence concern the state of the commonwealth : which if they were criminal, the council used to sit in the chamber called the Star Chamber; if civil, in the white chamber, or white-hall. And as the Chancery had the praetorian power for equity, so the Star Chamber had the censorian power for offences under the degree of capital." 2 Star Chamber Cases, Shewing What causes properly belong to the cognizance of that Court. Collected for the most part out of Mr. Crompton, his Bookc, Entituled, The Jurisdiction of diver's Courts, London, Printed by I. (.)., for John (irove, and are to bee sold at his shop in Chancerie Lane, over against the Sub P<vna office, 164 1."
"Perjury is a lye confirmed by oath. This perjurie that is punishable in the Star-Chamber, as I have heard learned men say, is such as is committed in some of the Kings Courts of Record. For if it be an extrajudicial! perjury, or committed in a court christian, or any inferiour and base Court, it is rather punishable by Ecclesiasticall pennance. Such perjury as is commonly punished in the Star Chamber, is corrected by some arbitrary censure, as some times by fine to his Majesty, sometimes by losse of an eare or eares, sometimes by imprisonment, and sometimes by more of these punishments
"Forgery, is that which the Civillians call Crimen falsi, or at least one part thereof: For by them, Crimen falsi is extended as well to false measures, or weights, to false accusations and conspiracies, (as wee call them) ad partus suppositos, and such like, as to forging of writ ings or Deeds. That which wee call Forgery, they terme falsitatem seriptorum, which is com mitted by as many wayes as are above expressed in the example of definition set downe by West." Of perjury he speaks as follows : —
