Note (Back) — Chapter I

20. Other Councils: The Star Chamber.—In 1487 there was created a special tribunal, consisting at the outset of seven great officials and members of the Council, including two judges, to take special cognizance of cases involving breaches of the law by offenders who were too powerful to be reached under the operation of the ordinary courts. This was the tribunal subsequently known, from its meeting-place, as the Court of Star Chamber. In effect it was from the beginning a committee of the Privy Council, empowered to exercise a jurisdiction which in truth had long been exercised extra-legally by the Council as a whole. The relation of the two institutions inclined in practice to become ever closer, and by the middle of the sixteenth century the Star Chamber had been enlarged to include all of the members of the Council, together with the two chief justices; and since the Star Chamber possessed a statutory sanction which the Council lacked, the judicial business of the older body was despatched regularly by its members sitting under the guise of the newer one. The tendency of the Tudor régime toward the conciliar type of government is manifested further by the creation of numerous subsidiary councils and courts whose history cannot be recounted here. Most of these were brought into existence during the reign of Henry VIII. Those of principal importance were (1) the Council of the North, set up in 1539; (2) the Council of Wales, confirmed by statute of 1542; (3) the Court of Castle Chamber, reproducing in Ireland the principal features of the English Star Chamber; (4) the Courts of Augmentation, First Fruits and Annates, and Wards; and (5) the Elizabethan Court of High Commission.[20]