Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/539

 1922 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS 531 the rest of the case to the council, if, indeed, title to land was recognizable in either. 1 The distinction in Henry VII 's reign between counsel atten- dant on the king and counsel in the star chamber was in fact simply a distinction between those counsellors who from time to time were selected to accompany the king on his progresses, and those who remained in London ; and there was no permanence even in this personal differentiation. A counsellor attending the king one day or week might be a counsellor in the star chamber the next, and vice versa. Counsel with the king, whoever they might be, could ' move ' or instruct counsel in the star chamber simply because their orders were the king's ; and the king being the source of all power, the nearer counsel were to the king the greater their authority. But there was as yet no constitutional dis- crimination between the jurisdiction of counsel attendant and counsel in the star chamber ; and assuredly there was nothing done by the council in the star chamber which could not also be done ' coram rege et consilio suo ubicunque f uerit '. They were indeed one council, and this unity explains Mill's statement, 2 which he did not quite understand himself, that ' untyll the tyme of my last predicessor 3 in a manner there was nothinge done either in the courte 4 publiquely or in the inner Starr chamber privately 5 but it passed under the hands of my predicessors and was entred in the bookes of entryes remayneing of recorde in the court in my custody '. The Liber Intrationum contains both political and judicial proceedings ; it was kept in Henry VH's reign by Robert Rydon ; and he was clerk of a single council which commonly sat for all its purposes (save perhaps poor men's causes after 1493) in the star chamber. Henry VII himself often sat in person with his council in the star chamber, 6 and occasionally he withdrew from its cognizance 1 Hudson (ii. 56) says ' the court did never take upon them to determine the right of inheritance, only took examinations of it, referring the title to be discussed by the judges and by them reported to the court ; which was continued till 5 Elizabeth. . . which course if it were now pursued, great titles would not have five verdicts on the one side and six on the other, and the land spent before the suit ended. . . and less corruption used than now is '. The council did, however, decide a dispute about inheritance in 1533 (Letters and Papers, vi. 818). 3 Thomas Marsh, clerk of the star chamber from 5 Edward VI to 9 Elizabeth. Mill is exaggerating a little ; his statement is probably correct enough down to 1540, when the clerks of the privy council began their own particular register, but not down to 1551. The clerk of the star chamber did, indeed, continue to attend even the privy council during term-time down to the end of the sixteenth century as a sort of liaison officer (Scofield, p. 36, n. 1), but he had no sort of control over the clerks of the privy council. i. e. of star chamber. 6 The privy council often sat in the inner star chamber, where there was a ' council- table ' (Acts of the Priv. Coun., xiii. 412, xxix. 383). 6 Fourteen occasions are noted in the fragmentary extracts from the Liber Intra- tionum (Scofield, pp. 6-8, 16-24). Mm2
 * Hargrave MS. 216, p. 236, quoted by Miss Scofield, p. iii.