Star Chamber

“ And John Chamberlain, Esq., writing to Sir Dudley Carlton, about the same period, observes, that "The world is now much terrified with the Star-Chamber, there being not so little an offence against any proclamation, but is liable and subject to the censure of that court. And for proclamations and patents, they are become so ordinary that there is no end; every day bringing forth some new project or other. ”

“ You need not be uneasy about this young man being summoned before the Star-Chamber. The great case of the Countess of Exeter against Lady Lake comes on before the King and the Lords of the Council to-morrow or next day, and it will occupy all their attention. They will have no time for aught else. ”

“ But the froward youth, whose brains seem crazed with his fancied wrongs, is not content with railing against us, but must needs lift up his voice against all constituted authority. He hath spoken contemptuously of the Star-Chamber,—and that, my lord Marquis, as you well know, is an offence, which cannot be passed over. ”

“ The mistake you have committed in regard to myself may be pardoned in one of your evident inexperience; who, fresh from the boorish society of the country, finds himself, for the first time, amongst well-bred gentlemen. Of all here present you are probably the sole person ignorant that I am Sir Giles Mompesson. But it is scarcely likely that they should be aware, as I chance to be, that the clownish insolent who has dared to wag his tongue against me, is the son of a Star-Chamber delinquent. ”

“ These restrictions disappeared with the abolition of the Star-Chamber in 1641, but very soon the Presbyterian majority in the Long Parliament began to pass orders framed with a view to enable them to suppress publications voicing the political and religious views of their opponents. ”

“ The goodly appearance you have inherited from your sire will not be long left when the tormentor takes you in hand. Ha! ha!"
"One censured by the Star-Chamber must wear a paper on his breast at the pillory. You must not forget that mark of infamy, Sir Giles," said the deputy-warden, chuckling.
"No, no; I forget it not," laughed the extortioner. "How ingeniously devised are our Star-Chamber punishments, Master Joachim, and how well they meet the offences. Infamous libellers and slanderers of the State, like Sir Jocelyn, are ever punished in one way ”

“ The star chamber alone was accustomed to punish infractions of the king’s edicts: but as no courts of judicature now remained except those in Westminster Hall, which take cognizance only of common and statute law, the king may thenceforth issue proclamations, but no man is bound to obey them, It must, however, be confessed, that the experiment here made by the parliament was not a little rash and adventurous. ”

“ In an age less corrupt and venal than that under consideration, such a career could not have long continued without check. But in the time of James the First, from the neediness of the monarch himself, and the rapacity of his minions and courtiers and their satellites,—each striving to enrich himself, no matter how—a thousand abuses, both of right and justice, were tolerated or connived at, crime stalking abroad unpunished. The Star-Chamber itself served the king as, in a less degree, it served Sir Giles Mompesson, and others of the same stamp, as a means of increasing his revenue ”

“ Note 12. (Page 51.)
"But that a gentleman should turn player hath puzzled me." To make an actor of a young gentleman, might, indeed, become a "Star Chamber matter." Among other "misdemeanors not reducible to heads," given in a Bodleian Library MS., entitled "A Short View of Criminal Cases Punishable and Heretofore Punished in the Court of the Star Chamber in the Times of Queen Elizabeth. King James, and His Late Majesty King Charles," is [Pg 423] this: "Taking up a gentleman's son to be a stage player." See John S. Burn's notices of the "Star Chamber." ”

“ I repeat, no man is safe from these extortioners. Since the law will not give us redress, and put them down, we must take the law into our own hands. They shall have Club Law."
"Ay, ay—'Prentices' law—Club law!" chorussed the others.
"Sir Giles will make a Star-Chamber matter of it. He will have us up before the Council," laughed the goldsmith's 'prentice.
"He will buy a monopoly of cudgels to deprive us of their use," cried a bowyer. ”

“ Such matters are not to be talked of at public tables—scarcely in private. It is well you have addressed yourself to one who will not betray you. The Star-Chamber hath its spies everywhere. Meddle not with it, as you value liberty. Light provocation arouses its anger; and once aroused, its wrath is all-consuming."
CHAPTER V. Jocelyn Mounchensey.
Notwithstanding the risk incurred, the young man, whose feelings were evidently deeply interested, seemed disposed to pursue the dangerous theme; but perceiving one of their opposite neighbours glancing at them, Sir Francis checked him ”

“ At this time, then, the jurisdiction of the council was recognized as supplementary to that of the ordinary courts of law. But the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses and the decay of local justice, owing to the influence of the great barons and the turbulence of all classes, obliged parliament to entrust wider powers to the council. This was the object of the famous act of 1487, which was incorrectly quoted by the lawyers of the long parliament as creating the court of star chamber, which was in reality of earlier origin. ”

“ At which time he caused an assembly to be made in the Star Chamber, of all the noblemen, judges, and justices of the peace of every shire that were at that present in Westminster Hall, and there made to them a long oration, declaring unto them the cause of his embassy into France, and of his proceeding there ”

“ There seems, however, to be good reason to protest against the star chamber methods which the Association seems inclined to adopt. We are told of a dinner given by the municipal council of Paris, a reception by the president of the French Republic and a theatrical performance at the Comédie Française, but not the slightest information can be obtained regarding the secret sessions of the Academy, at which scientific plans were presumably considered. ”

“ Hitherto, he has succeeded in masking his designs with so much skill that they have escaped detection; but when the mischief he has done under the mask of justice, and the wrongs and cruelties he has perpetrated in the name of the law shall be fully made known, no punishment will be deemed commensurate to his crimes. It is chiefly he and his partner who, by their evil doings, have brought the Star-Chamber into disrepute, and made it a terror to all just men, who have dreaded being caught within the toils woven around it by these infamous wretches ”

“ Horace Walpole wrote some bitter verses on the subject of that House whose members "sleep in monumental state, to show the spot where their great Fathers sate;"
"Thou senseless Hall, whose injudicious space, Like Death, confounds a various mismatched race, Where Kings and clowns, th' ambitious and the mean, Compose th' inactive soporific scene." [43]
Peers themselves no doubt regard the Upper Chamber as a haven where merit may receive its ultimate reward; where the achievements and the recompense of the deserving are suitably immortalized. ”

“ Those who have not quite left hope behind can go in here. Here are the tickers communicating with the Chamber, tended by lads, who transfer the figures to big blackboards on the wall. In front of these boards sit, from morning to night, rows, perhaps relays, of men intently or listlessly watching the figures. Many of them, who seldom make a sign, come here from habit; they have nowhere else to go. Some of them were once lords in the great Chamber, who have been, as the phrase is, “cleaned out.” ”

“ Tier upon tier, in the division set apart for them, the members of the Lower House moved and murmured above the pageant; and the coronation of the new sovereign was connected in their minds with the great measure which, still undecided, made at that time a link between the People and the King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aristocracy, at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as its representative. Without the space was one dense mass. Houses, from balcony to balcony, window to window, were filled as some immense theatre. ”

“ This noble Chamber has a large irregular area of floor space, is very high, and has running round three sides a narrow elevated gallery, from which spectators can look down upon the throng below. Upon a raised dais at one side sits the presiding genius of the place, who rules very much as Jupiter was supposed to govern the earthly swarms, by letting things run and occasionally launching a thunderbolt. ”

“ In the House of Commons, with all its workaday and industrious life, the deep and dark green has always more or less of a worn and shabby look. In the Upper Chamber the original splendour of the crimson cloth is undimmed; for most of the benches remain void and unoccupied for 999 nights of the thousand on which their lordships meet.
The two chambers—a contrast.
Whatever the cause I always associate the House of Lords in my mind with emptiness and silence, and the gloomy scenes of desertion. ”

“ In the daylight a warm dimness prevails. At night the Chamber looks more impressive, when a mellow radiance streaming from the lights through its glass ceiling falls upon the crowded benches. But to the uninstructed stranger accidentally straying into it on an off-day, its stiff arrangement of tiers of benches, upholstered in dark green, on each side, and the absence of any pictorial background, would suggest an assembly-room or debating-hall, with a certain air of distinction, it is true, but lacking character and soul. ”

“ Apart from the staircase tower, [490] the upper floor of the southern block consisted of the ‘upper’ frater or refectory, a spacious apartment, which had been used for Parliaments and the legatine trial of Henry VIII’s divorce case, and was sometimes known as ‘the Parliament chamber’. [1527] The ground floor is a little more difficult. The survey of 1548 assigns to it a ‘blind’, that is, I suppose, a windowless, or at any rate dark, parlour, which came next the buttery block, and a hall, to which the parlour served as an entry. ”

“ We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within us—we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. ”

“ Some one appears in answer to a summons from without; an eavesdropper listens to a conversation below; a girl talks to her lover, and there may be an ascent or descent with the help of a rope-ladder or a basket. But [94] there are a few plays in which we are obliged to constitute the existence of a regular chamber scene, with several personages and perhaps furniture, set ‘above’. The second scene of the induction to the Taming of the Shrew, just cited, is already a case in point. The presenters here do not merely sit, as spectators in the lord’s room might, and listen. ”

“ That ancient Chamber, which was never again to echo the accents of a debate so great, which stood indeed already doomed, as if it could not long survive the order of things of which it had been for centuries the centre, had heard, it may be, speeches more lofty, men more eloquent—for whom had it not heard?—but never men more in earnest, or words more keenly barbed by the prejudices of the passing, or the aspirations of the coming, age. ”

“ It was a remarkable scene; a spectator could never have credited that this was an authoritative assembly into which the hermit had presented himself unbidden; it seemed rather as if that hall were the presence chamber of the wise and saintly man, and deputies from far and near—knight, merchant, and peasant—had gathered about him, and pressed forward to receive his judgment. With all the eloquence of wisdom, and a heartfelt interest, the venerable man addressed the assembly. ”

“ The Lords’ committee hear appeals, and it is a wondrous sight to see those old boys snoozing and twiddling their thumbs on the crimson benches of their golden chamber. They seem not to listen to the elaborate word-entanglements of the bewigged pleaders; yet they make remarks full of sense and pregnant with acumen. You are a young man or woman, dear reader of this, I hope. You have not much time to lose. Go straight down to Palace Yard, pass through Westminster Hall, and up the stone stairs, by the giant brazen candelabra and the great stained-glass window. ”

“ And here is a point for you, Captain Rames." Henry Smale turned with a warning finger upraised and stopped in his walk. "The most distinguished men enter this House and never get the ear of it. The House of Commons is not ungenerous, but for eight hours a day through a long portion of the year people are talking in that Chamber there, and it will not provide an audience unless, first, the speaker has something of his own to contribute, and, secondly, can express his contribution. ”

“ It has never acted as what it is imagined by the political architects of Europe to be, an Upper Chamber revising with maturer wisdom and in an impartial spirit the hasty or ultra-democratic legislation of the more popular House. ”