functions of the old Council revive. But by this time the old Council had become the Court of Star Chamber with a large and regular judicial business. Henry VIII, therefore, had to create a new institution, the Privy Council. When the Court of Star Chamber was abolished in 1641, the old mediaeval Council at last came to an end, and there only remained Henry VIII’s recent invention, the Privy Council.
A word must be said of the famous act of 1487.1 Old writers took it as the statutory origin of the Court of Star Chamber, principally on the strength of a marginal title on the statute roll which reads “pro camera stellata”. So firm was this belief that when the court was abolished in 1641 the act of 1487 was repealed. It has now been shown that this act has no connection with the Star Chamber, and that the marginal title is an addition in a later handwriting. The act’s principal effect was to emphasise the separation between the civil jurisdiction of the Chancery and the criminal jurisdiction of the Council, for it called upon the principal officers of State2 to exercise wide powers for the repression of serious crime—and it is certain that they had already exercised these powers for many years. In short, the act was one more public threat by the government, which proclaimed its intention of vigorously enforcing the law by a summary procedure in the Council.3
Nevertheless, as far as the reign of Henry VII is concerned,
“the most striking characteristic of the court was its moderation. It was surely the mildest-mannered tribunal that ever sentenced a criminal, considerate in its procedure, gentle in its punishments, and failing altogether to live up to the reputation of ruthlessness that the Star Chamber has enjoyed since the seventeenth century.”4
STAR CHAMBER AND STATUTE LAW
The tradition which associated the Star Chamber with the act of 1487 has some significance, however, for it emphasises the importance of the problem of enforcing statute law. The fifteenth-century government tried to check the growth of disorder and corruption by enacting heavy penalties against persons guilty of these offences. But statutes are unavailing without enforcement, and they had little effect until the Council and the Star Chamber took the matter in hand. It thus came about that the Star Chamber was largely concerned with the summary enforcement of legislation. Simultaneously, attempts were made from time to time to provide special courts for the enforcement of particular groups of statutes. The act of 1487 is an example of this policy, and the similarity of the means and the end may well account for the rise of the opinion that the act was the origin of the court, instead of both being independent attempts to enforce the same body of statute law.
Indeed, it was becoming a common opinion that drastic legislation can only be effectively enforced by courts erected ad hoc, and untrammelled by the ancient common law traditions. An early example is a statute of 1362 which contains the following remarkable, but little-known provision:
“Item, if any man feels himself grieved contrary to any of the articles above written or any others contained in divers statutes, if he will come into the chancery (or someone on his behalf) and make his complaint, he shall now have a remedy there by force of the said articles and statutes without suing anywhere else to have redress.”1
If the provisions of this and similar acts had been consistently followed, the Chancery would have become a court for the application of statute law, and particularly that of a constitutional, international or commercial character. The act of 1487, as we have seen, set up a special body to deal with statute law of a criminal character, and this was amended in 1529.2 In 1535 or 1536 it was proposed to empower the group mentioned in the act of 1487 to hear charges of corruption against certain public officials,3 and still more interesting is a bill of about the same date which would have set up a court of “conservators of the common weal” to enforce all statutes passed since 1485.4 Of the greatest examples of this tendency, the financial courts of Henry VIII, we have already spoken: one other, the Court of High Commission, will be mentioned later.
The connection of the Star Chamber with the numerous statutory offences created during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was carried a step further when, under the Tudors and Stuarts, it undertook to enforce royal proclamations. The legal questions involved belong to constitutional history, where they had much to do with the growing unpopularity of the court, which was considerably augmented by a further development whereby the Star Chamber assumed legislative powers by making “decrees”.1
THE COURT OF REQUESTS
Numerous courts were founded upon the model of the Council. Many of them have faint beginnings in the reign of Henry VII or even earlier, but it is to Henry VIII and Elizabeth that they owe the bulk of their power. We have already mentioned the Council and the Star Chamber; there were many more besides. The Court of Requests first appears in 14832 and was modelled to some extent on the Chambre des Requêtes, a similar institution in France. The next we hear of it is in 1485 when a bill to abolish it was introduced into parliament and passed the commons, but got no further.3 Under Henry VII it was, in effect, a committee of the Council for the hearing of poor men’s causes and matters relating to the King’s servants. Sometimes it appears in two divisions, one in the White Hall at Westminster and the other travelling with the King. Its jurisdiction was mainly civil, although at times it entertained matters of a criminal character, such as grave disorder, forgery, etc., and for some time the court seems to have been genuinely popular. Its head was the Lord Privy Seal, and assisting him were a number of masters of requests, two of whom deserve to be remembered for their contributions to legal literature: Christopher St. Germain, and Sir Julius Caesar. Its organisation closely followed that of the Chancery. Its procedure was at first intended to be informal, but the abuses to which this led compelled the court to follow the Chancery system of having bills drawn and signed by counsel. In the end it passed from an extreme of informality to the opposite extreme of technicality when it had adopted the summary procedure of the civil law—which was far from summary according to modern ideas. No doubt the example of Chancery was influential here, as also in its claims to administer equity. Later in Elizabeth’s reign the presence of civilians in the Court of Requests led that court to exercise a wide Admiralty jurisdiction, including mercantile as well as maritime and prize jurisdiction.4
COURTS OF THE MARCHES
Exercising concurrent jurisdiction with the Council and the Star Chamber were two other courts, the Council of Wales and the Council of the North. These remarkable bodies combined with the utmost facility the political business of governing Wales and the North (where there was considerable unrest at this time) with such judicial duties as seemed to them expedient. They controlled local government within their area, and acted as courts of equity and of extraordinary criminal jurisdiction.
ROYAL CHURCH COURTS
The Reformation statutes necessitated the creation of yet more special courts to enforce their provisions and carry out their policy. Appeals which once went from the archbishop to the pope were reserved by a statute of 1534 to the King, who was to follow the papal practice of commissioning delegates to hear them.1 Hence there was created the High Court of Delegates. The judges were not permanent but nominated ad hoc for each case, and, as they were paid latterly but a guinea a day, only very junior men would consent to act, and so the court enjoyed very little esteem.2 Its powers are now exercised by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The Act of Supremacy3 conferred upon the Crown the whole remaining jurisdiction of the pope, and to exercise this immense and vague authority commissions were issued from time to time, which finally became stabilised in their content, and the persons empowered to act by them became known as the Court of High Commission.4 It consisted mainly of bishops and devoted itself largely to the criminal side of the ex-papal jurisdiction. Its proceedings
