Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/547

 1922 STAR CHAMBER UNDER THE TUDORS 539 jurisdiction rested. That question is easier to answer. Repeatedly during the last half of the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth centuries parliament delegated to the council statutory authority to hear and determine, calling to them the justices and others skilled in the law, 1 parliamentary petitions with which parliament had had no time to deal, and even to enrol its decisions on the parliament roll. The phraseology of one of the later of these acts of parliament, 2 passed in 1427, lays down the personnel of which the council in the star chamber always consisted ; and it was actually in the star chamber that on 15 June 1427 the lords of the council are recorded in the rolls of parliament as having under- taken the task which parliament had committed to their charge. Nor were these matters of common law, but matters with which the star chamber commonly dealt ; for no one had need for a petition in parliament if remedy was available at common law. The same continuity helps us to understand the terms in which not only Mill and Hudson, Bacon and James I, but Smith and Lambarde, Camden and Coke, speak of the court of star chamber. When Smith writes of the suitor there ' seeing as it were the majesty of the whole realm before him ' ; 3 when Lam- barde remarks that it ' hath obtained that dignity to bear a name above all others ' ; 4 when Camden says ' si vetustatem spectemus, est antiquissima, si dignitatem, honoratissima ' ; 5 and Coke declares that ' it is the most honourable Court (our Parliament excepted) that is in the Christian world ', 6 they were not referring to a mushroom growth, nor to a private committee set up in 1487 to deal with household offences, but to a king's council which was older than parliament itself ; and when the long parliament ' abolished ' the star chamber in 1641, it only cut out the dying wood, leaving, perhaps by some unforeseen accident, the original root to develop in the fullness of time a jurisdiction which under the ancient name of ' the Board ' embraces appeals from a world- wide empire. A. F. POLLARD. 1 See my Evolution of Parliament, pp. 128-32. Petitions ount estez baillez et exhibitez a vre tres noble hautesse p les communes de cest present Parlement, pur ent avoir covenable remedie, et unquore nient determinees, d'ordeiner p advys des Seignrs Espirituelx et Temporelx, et assent des Communes avauntditz, que les dites Petitions purront estre deliverez a les Seignrs de vre tres sage conseill, lesqueux appellez a eux lez Justices et autres gentz aprisez en vre ley, si bosoigne y soit, aiaunt poair p auctorite du dit Parlement, pentre cy et la Feste del Nativite du Seint John Baptiste prochein a venir, d'oier et terminer lez ditz Petitions ; et que ycelles ensi terminez de 1'advys et assent susditz purront estre enactez, enrollez, et mys de recorde en le rolle de mesme vre Parlement. Le Roi le voet Etpuis, c'est a voir, le xv jour de Juyn ... en presence des plusours Seignrs du conseill nostre dit S? le Roi. . . esteantz en le Sterre chambre de Westm? . . .' 1 De Repvblica, ed. Alston, p. 116. * Archeion, 1635, p. 175. 6 Britannia, ed. 1600, p. 141. Fourth Institute, c. 5.
 * Rot. Parl. iv. 334 : ' Please au Roi nre soverain Sr considerer, comme plusours