Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/374

 large number of forfeitures, and the large sums exacted as fines on restoration, show that scarcely any amount of political guilt was beyond forgiveness, if the repentance were accompanied by a handsome sum down. On the whole, where society was just recovering from a condition in which nothing was certain for two days together, and nearly every household was divided against itself, anything like settled peace was worth paying for, and the people generally justified by acquiescence in fact, however much and rightly they might in words complain of the mercenary policy of the court. Parliament itself acquiesced without complaint.

Leaving then these acts out of sight, I will mention the most important laws of permanent interest. In the session of 1485 were passed the act of succession, establishing the king's title, an act which allowed the bishops to imprison incontinent clergy without applying to the sheriff's to arrest them, and an act against unlawful hunting. In 1487 the act which founded the Court of Star Chamber was passed, as a remedy for the evils of maintenance, the misconduct of sheriffs, and riots and unlawful assemblies. The court so founded was to consist of the chancellor, treasurer and privy seal, taking to themselves a bishop, a lord temporal and the two chief justices. This tribunal, which took its name from the Camera Stellata, the chamber in which the council generally sat, subsequently developed into a judicial meeting of councillors and peers which has a great history of its own; bat there is no reason to question its historic identity throughout, or that this was the occasion of its foundation. This is the great judicial measure of the reign, and was intended to meet acknowledged evils.

Blackstone has recorded his impression that every act of the reign was intended for the benefit of the exchequer; perhaps we may allow that, under certain conditions, there is no price too heavy to pay for peace and order. The chief acts of 1489 and 1490 are commercial; cap. 13 limits the benefit of clergy, which is to be allowed only once to persons not in holy orders; murderers are to be marked with an M., other felons with a T.; and a second claim is not to be admitted unless the Letters of Orders are produced. Cap. 19 forbids the pulling down of