Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/534

 526 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TV DORS October by the act. It is simpler, in the total absence of evidence to the contrary, to assume that the act did not refer to the star chamber. What, then, was its purport ? Probably it should be inter- preted in the light of another ' item ' or act of the same statute of 1487, which appears as no. 26 on the roll of parliament and as no. 14 in the Petyt manuscript and printed statutes. Its title varies from ' Felony ' in Caxton to more elaborate but inaccurate attempts to describe its object, which was to give the steward, treasurer, and comptroller of the king's household, or one of them, power to try, with a jury of twelve members of the household, and condemn for felony any members of the household, under the estate of lords, 1 for confederacies, compassings, conspiracies, imaginations to destroy or murder the king, a lord of the realm, or king's counsellor ; and the reason alleged for the act was the ' destruction of the kings and the near undoing of this realm ' owing to quarrels among those in ' great authority, office, and of council with kings of this realm ', and to the fact that ' by the law of this land, if actual deeds be not had, there is no remedy for such false compassings ', &c. Henry VII 's foes were of his own household. In the first few days of his first parliament 2 he had caused members of that household, peers, and commons solemnly in parliament to forswear retainers, maintenance, liveries, em- braceries, riots, and unlawful assemblies ; and shortly afterwards, it is said, he had seen some of these very men indulging in the practices they had forsworn. The so-called Star Chamber Act of 1487 was intended to strike at the heart of the evil, its entrench- ment in the king's household. Now, it was difficult to strike by means of the council in the star chamber ; that council was a huge and unwieldy body which, moreover, contained some of the worst offenders. Hence the small but powerful personnel of the committee set up by that act : the chancellor, treasurer, lord privy seal, the two chief justices, and a bishop and a baron who would be nominated by the king or at his dictation. Hence, too, the privacy of the proceedings and absence of regular records. It was no part of Henry's design to advertise in a public court like the star chamber the misdemeanours of his household officials. The act was not intended to, and did not, deprive the council in the star chamber of its jurisdiction over similar offences committed outside the royal household, still less to determine the personnel of that council. Its object was to bring the more intimate offenders before a more intimate tribunal. No star chamber record has been found of the fine traditionally imposed on the Earl of Oxford for breaking the king's laws in the king's sight. Oxford was not a person whom Henry could afford 1 They were entitled of course to be tried by their peers for felony.
 * Rot. Parl. vi. 287 ; my Henry VII, i. 26-7.