Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/528

 520 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS October offenders against proclamations ' concerning any kind of heresies'. 1 In February 1591 a peerage case was ordered to be tried in the star chamber ' by such of their Lordships and others as are therunto appointed by her majesty '. 2 In 1534 the lords, after passing the bill against the Nun of Kent, agreed that Sir Thomas More and others named in it should be heard ' coram Dominis in regio senatu secus nuncupate the Sterred Chamber ' ; 3 and in 1515 a lords' and commons' committee met there to discuss the carrying over to the next session of bills not passed before the prorogation. 4 It was in the star chamber that a committee of lords and commons made the first breach in the defences of the church against the Reformation in December 1529. 5 The star chamber was in fact frequently used for commons' committee meetings, and it was in the star chamber that a committee reviewed in December 1640 the sentences against Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick. ' It happened ', writes D'Ewes to his wife, ' by a mere casualtie that our first sitting upon this business was in the Starr e -Chamber, wheerein I noted God's wonderfull Providence, that wee should sitt in that Court wheere their bloudie sentences had passed against them, to judge those sentences.' 6 When all these things, and more, could be done in the star chamber, how came star chamber to have a specific meaning excluding most of these functions ? The plausible answer is that the so-called Star Chamber Act of 1487 (3 Henry VII, c. 1), which was long regarded as the original and sole statutory foundation of the court, and is still treated as the most important incident in its history save its abolition, gave the star chamber its predominant characteristic. It may be easier to follow the trend of my argument if I premise at once that, so far as I can see, the act of 1487 had little or nothing to do with the star chamber, and that its provisions are inconsistent with what we know of the personnel, the practice, and the procedure of that court. It is well enough known that the words star chamber do not occur in the act on which it was supposed to rest ; less familiar are the facts that the words occur neither in the judges' interpretation of the act in 1493 7 nor in the act of 1529 8 which praised and amended that of 1487, and that for at least half a 1 31 Henry VIII, c. 8 ; Leadam, Star Chamber Cases, ii, pp. xix-xx, 225, 277 ; Wriothealey, Chron. i. 130. Lambert had been tried in November 1538 for heresy in the white hall (Hall, Chron. p. 826). Bonner's sentence of deprivation was con- firmed in the star chamber in February 1550 (Wriothesley, Chron. ii. 33). Acts Priv. Coun. 1590-1, p. 251. Lords' Journals, i. 72. Ibid. i. 45, 46, 47. Hall, p. 767. D'Ewes, Autobiogr. ii. 251-2. Year Books, TottePs ed., 8 Henry VII, Pasch., fo. xiii ; my Henry VII, ii. 57. 21 Henry VIII, c. 20.