The Court of Star Chamber. ment," and enacted that the Court of Star Chamber, and all similar courts, and particu larly the Courts of the Council of the Marches of Wales, the President and Coun cil of the North, the Duchy of Lancaster, and the Court of Exchequer of the County Palatine of Chester be abolished, and that no similar court be established for the future. The words of the act are, " The like jurisdiction now used and exercised " in the courts named " shall be also repealed and absolutely revoked and made void." 1 Those unfortunate victims who, after un dergoing ignominious punishment and cruel mutilations, had been sent to languish in distant prisons, were set at liberty and con ducted through the streets of London in triumphant procession. Says Macaulay: "The abolition of those three hateful courts, the Northern Council, the Star Chamber, and the High Commission, would alone entitle the Long Parliament to the lasting gratitude of Englishmen." But while we can but with justice look back to the Court of Star Chamber with a feeling of loathing for its tyranny and op pressions, we must not forget the great ser vices which it rendered for many generations, and the lasting benefits it contributed to our system of law. Stephen says : — "The common law was in all ways a most de fective system. It was incomplete. Its punish ments were capricious and cruel. Its most characteristic institution, trial by jury, was open to abuse in every case in which persons of local influence were interested. Juries themselves were often corrupt, and the process of attaint, the only one by which at common law a false verdict could be impeached or a corrupt juryman be punished, was as uncertain and as open to corrupt influences as other forms of trial by jury." "When a corrupt jury," says Hudson, 2 " had 1 The Court ot Star Chamber was dissolved, but the other courts were not dissolved in terms. The " Court holden before the President and Council of the Marches of Wales " seems to have survived for forty-eight years, as it was abolished in 1 688 by I Wm. & M. ch. 27. s P. 14.
29
given an injurious verdict, if there had been no remedy but to attaint them by another jury, the wronged party would have had but small remedy, as is manifested by common experience, no jury having for many years attainted a former. As also at this day in the principality of Wales, if a man of good alliance have a cause to be tried, though many sharp laws have been made for favorable panels, yet it is impossible to have a jury which will find against him, be the cause never so plain; or if arraigned for murder he shall hardly be convicted, although the fear of punishment of this court carries some awful re spect over them." "According to our modern views, the proper cure for such defects would be intelligent and comprehensive legislation as to both crimes and criminal procedure, but for many reasons such an undertaking as a criminal code would have been practically impossible in the Tudor period. In these circumstances the Star Chamber not merely exercised a control over influential noblemen and gentlemen which put a stop to much oppression and corrupt interference with the course of jus tice, but supplied some of the defects of a system which practically left unpunished forgery, per jury, attempts and conspiracies to commit crimes, and many forms of fraud and force. "In the latter stages of its history, no doubt the Court of Star Chamber became a partisan court, and punished with cruel severity men who offended the king or his ministers. Nothing can be said in excuse of such proceedings as those against Prynne or Lilburne; but it is just to ob serve that the real objection made was to the punishment of the acts themselves, rather than to the cruelty of branding or whipping. The pun ishments inflicted by the common law were in many cases more cruel than those of the Star Chamber, yet they seem to have elicited no in dignation. There is also some reason to believe that the cruel punishments inflicted under Charles I. were at least to some extent an innovation on the earlier practice of the court." 1 1Hudson is quite enthusiastic. He says: " Since the great Roman senate, so famous to all ages and nations, as that they might be called jure mirum orliis, there hath no court come so near them in state honour and judicature as this; the judges of this court being surely in honour, state and majesty, learning, understanding, justice, piety and mercy, equal and in many exceeding the Roman senate by such much, by how much Christian knowledge exceedeth
