Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/541

 1922 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS 533 and the Duke of Richmond's council for northern parts. 1 Sir Thomas Elyot's letter, quoted in my previous article, 2 com- plaining that this delegation deprived him of his living as clerk of the star chamber, is the most striking testimony to the effect of the policy ; and it has even been said that after Wolsey's fall ' we seldom hear of the star chamber ' in Henry VIII's reign. 3 This assertion is hardly justified, and there are numerous com- plaints, especially from Wales and its marches, that the delegation was not observed, but that cases were continually being called up to Westminster. Nevertheless the council in the star chamber never recovered the position it had held under Wolsey, and its gradual subordina- tion to the privy council was due to deeper causes than the disappearance of Wolsey's personality or the delegation of functions to provincial councils. Fundamentally it was due to the circumstance that the problem of maintaining domestic law and order was becoming less dominant, partly because the star chamber had done its best work, and partly because other pro- blems of external and ecclesiastical politics emerged which re- quired a different sort of council from that in the star chamber to deal with them. This counter-attraction may have been partly responsible for the legislative proposals to relieve all counsellors except the chancellor from the necessity of attending the star chamber. 4 The chancellor himself was often distracted between the law and politics. Probably Wolsey's schemes of 1516-17 and 1525-6 were partly due to a wish for more time to spend on foreign afairs. Sir Thomas More was freer to devote himself to the law, and Audley, his successor, had little political aptitude or ambition. No later chancellor combined like Wolsey the direction of the Great Seal with that of foreign policy. Wriothes- ley may have aspired to the part, and he had conspicuous ability ; but when, early in Edward VI's reign, he commissioned sub- ordinates to exercise his cancellarial duties in order to find more time for politics, his opponents were able to precipitate his fall. 5 His successors Rich and Goodrich were politically unimportant. Bishop Gardiner recovered some shreds of Wolsey's power, but Heath resembled Warham rather than Wolsey, and Elizabeth's lord keepers and lord chancellors were lawyers completely over- 1 R. R. Reid, Council in the North, 1921 ; C. A. J. Skeel, Council of Wales and its Marches, 1904. 2 Above, p. 360. 3 John Bruce in Archaeologia, xxv. 377-8. 4 The chancellor was paid 200 a year extra for this duty. His total remuneration, according to Queen Elizabeth's Annual Expence (Soc. of Antiquaries), p. 241, came to 1,047 a year (cf. Letters and Papers, iv. 6079, xix. i. 610 [41]). The lord privy seal had 365 a year out of the customs of London, Bristol, Poole, Plymouth, Fowey, &c. (Letters and Papers, in. 3176, iv. 6163 ; for details see ibid. xvn. 1251 [7]). 5 See my England under Protector Somerset, 1900, pp. 31-3.