Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/525

 1922 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS 517 always sat in the larger room, but it frequently sat as a privy council in the inner star chamber. The original star chamber was built between 1340 and 1350 near the Receipt of the Exchequer as a council chamber x in addition to that exchequer chamber in which the council had previously sat for financial and other business ; but it is almost certainly an error to regard it as the only council chamber which could be described as ' near the Exchequer '. 2 Whether it originally contained more than one room is not known, but as early as Richard Ill's reign we read of the king summoning all the judges to consult with him in interiori Camera Stellata, 3 and considerable additions to it were made in Wolsey's time about 1518. Appropriately enough he employed fines levied before him there to ' lengthening and making of the Sterre chamber at Westminster ', 4 which only disappeared with the great fire of 1834. Possibly some reconstruction had been necessitated by the fire of 1512, since which no English sovereign has lived in Westminster Palace, though, as Stow remarks, ' the great hall, with the offices near adjoining, are kept in good reparations, and serveth as afore for feasts at coronations, arraignments of great persons charged with treasons, keeping of courts of justice, &c.' 5 This star chamber was the frequent if not the regular place in his judgement seat but not in his chamber ".' Here ' chamber ' seems to distinguish the inner star chamber from the court of the star chamber ; but Hudson, in Hargrave's Collectanea luridica, ii. 41, refers to the two sworn clerks of the star chamber, ' the one for the decrees of open court, the other for ordinary course '. In Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (iv. 3258) is a reference to ' the length of the table in the inner chamber of the Star Chamber '. Henrietta Maria apparently used the third room when she followed the proceedings in Pell v. Bagg (Rushworth, ii. 303). Besides its clerks the star chamber had its domestic staff, an usher, steward, butler, and kitchen officials ; and the dinners served there were regular state functions. 1 A number of references to the building accounts are collected in Baildon's edition of Hawarde, pp. 453-64. Stow mentions other buildings of that decade, viz. the reconstruction of St. Stephen's and the construction for the canons, &c., of houses stretching from the Receipt of the Exchequer to the river, and later the weigh-house between the clock-house and the wool staple. In Henry VIII's reign the clerk of the wool staple was also clerk of the house of commons. 2 In Leadam and Baldwin's Select Cases before the King's Council (Selden Soc.), p. 91, an exchequer chamber case is assumed to be a star chamber case because it was heard en la chambre joignante a mesme leschequier. But in every real star chamber case in the volume the star chamber is specifically indicated eo nomine ; and in 1493 the judges, in commenting on Stat. 31 Edward III, c. 12, which uses the phrase en ascun chambre du conseil joust lexchequer, identify it with le Eschiquier chambre ( Year Books, Tottel's ed., 8 Henry VII, Pasch., fo. xiii.). 3 Ibid. 2 Richard III, Mich., fo. ix b. 4 Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ii. 1476 ; cf. ibid. no. 3741, ' a new house adjoining the Sterred Chamber '. Hudson, loc. cit., ii. 64, says ' Dr. Allan and Christo- pher Plummer in 9 Henry VIII (1517-18) were fined 500 marks, which was ordained to be employed for the new building of those rooms which are now from the Court of the Star Chamber to the bridge in the palace ', i. e. northwards to where the clock tower now stands. 5 Survey, ed. Thorns, p. 174.