Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/49

 28

THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER. XI. By John D. L1ndsay. THE cases which have been cited are but a very few instances of the op pression of the Star Chamber during Charles I.'s reign. Macaulay says: — "The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure of the king, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obse quious as they were, they were less ready and less efficient instruments of arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious inquisi tion. Neither was a part of the old Constitution of England. The Star Chamber had been re modeled, and the High Commission created, by the Tudors. The power which these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided chiefly by the vio lent spirit of the primate, and freed from the control of Parliament, they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age. The government was able through their instrumentality to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A separate council which sat at York, under the presidency of Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority of Westminster Hall, and daily committed ex cesses which the most distinguished Royalists have warmly condemned. We are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note in the realm who had not personal experience of the harshness and greediness of the Star Cham ber, that the High Commission had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in the king

dom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had made the great charter a dead letter on the north of the Trent." Between the dissolution of the short-lived assembly convoked by Charles in the spring of 1640, and the meeting of that ever-mem orable body known as the Long Parliament in November of the same year, " which," says Macaulay, " in spite of many errors and disasters is justly entitled to the reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world, enjoy the blessings of constitutional Government," the oppression of the Star Chamber was exercised at its greatest height. Members of the House of Commons were called before it and questioned concerning their parliamentary conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply. The Lord Mayor and Sheriff of London were threat ened with imprisonment for remissness in collecting the payment of ship money, which was levied with increased rigor. Wentworth, it is said, observed with characteristic inso lence and cruelty that things would never go right till the aldermen were hanged. The Star Chamber was finally abolished by one of the first statutes passed by the Long Parliament, — "that great Parliament destined to every extreme of fortune, to em pire and to servitude, to glory and to con tempt; at one time the sovereign of its sovereign, at another time the servant of its servants." 1 This statute was the 16 Charles I. ch. 10. It recited the different statutes bearing on the subject, declared that the proceedings, censures, and " decrees of the court have by experience been found to be an intolerable burden to the subjects, and the means to introduce an arbitrary power and govern1 Macaulay.