Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 06.pdf/188

 The Court of Star Chamber.

163

THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER. By John D. Lindsay. II.

IN the reign of Henry III. the council was considered a court of peers within the terms of Magna Charta. It unquestionably exercised a direct jurisdiction over all the king's subjects, and great transgressors against the public peace were dealt with by it. Segrave, constable of the Tower, was arraigned before the council for allowing the escape of Mortimer. There is a curious record showing how Sir John Dalton was summoned, " sub forisfactura vitae ct membrorum et omnium aliorum qua; nobis forisfacere poteris," to bring before the Council one Margeria de la Beche, the wife of Gerard De l'lle, whom Dalton had forcibly ab ducted, and to do and receive (ad faciendum ct recipiendum) such orders as the council should give. The council consisted of certain of the peers, together with the great officers of state, the justices and others whom the king chose to take into his confidence, as persons whose advice he deemed most use ful in affairs of importance. This assembly possessed some of the powers exercised by the whole council sitting in parliament, and as both retained the same appellation, and the king presided in both, there was no difference in the style of them as courts; each was coram rcge in concilio, or coram ipso rcge in concilio, till the reign of Edward I., when the term Parliament was first applied to the national assembly. The barons or lords, by virtue of the judi cial authority which still resided in them, constituted the court of last resort in all cases of error; they explained doubtful questions of law and interpreted their own acts; for which purpose the judges of the common law courts used to refer to them matters of difficulty coming before them.

They heard causes commenced originally there, and tried criminal accusations against their own members. The council, properly so called, seems to have had a more ordinary and more com prehensive jurisdiction than the commune concilium; which it was enabled to exer cise more "frequently, as it might be, and was, continually summoned, while the other was called only on great emergencies. In the court held coram rcge in concilio there seems to have originally resided a certain supreme administration of justice in respect of all matters, both civil and crim inal, which were not cognizable in the courts below. Its decisions were ex cequo ct bono, upon principles of equity and general law. All offenses of a very exorbitant kind were proper subjects of their criminal animadver sion. If the offenders were of a rank which exempted them from the usual process, or the occasion required something more ex emplary than was within the power of the inferior justice, these were reasons for bring ing inquiries before the council. In these, and in some other instances, it acted only in concurrence with and in aid of the courts below. "Thus," says Reeves, "was the adminis tration of justice still kept, as it were, in the hands of the king, who, notwithstanding the dissolution of his great council where he presided, was still in construction of law, supposed to be in all those which were de rived out of it. Thus, as we have seen, the style of the great council was coram rege in concilio, as was that of his ordinary council for advice. The chancery, when it became a court, was coram rcge in cancellarid, and the principal new court which had sprung out of the curia regis was coram ipso rege