The drama, the surest proof of an advanced civilization, had then its first beginnings, and was perfected by the immortal genius of Shakspeare; while Bacon opened up a new method of philosophy, whose practical fruits we may be said even now to gather. A. THE COURT OF STAR CHAMBER. The origin of this court is derived from the most remote antiquity. It was originally composed of all the members of the king's consilium ordinarium or ordinary council, and its jurisdiction embraced both civil and criminal causes. Its title was derived from the camera stellata or Star Chamber, an apartment in the king's palace at Westminster in which it held its sittings; and we find "the lords sitting in Star Chamber" used as a well-known phrase in the records of Edward III. The name was continued long after the locality of the court was changed. In the time of Edward III. the jurisdiction of the court had become so oppressive, that various statutes were made to abridge and restrain it; and after this period its power, though not wholly extinct, appears to have gradually declined till the time of the Tudors. Henry VII., in the third year of his reign, erected a new court on the ruins of the old. It consisted of the chancellor, the treasurer, and the lord privy seal, as judges, together with a bishop, a temporal lord of the council, and the two chief justices, or, in their absence, two other justices, as assistants. This court was not therefore, strictly speaking, the Court of Star Chamber; still less are we to look upon it, as some writers have done, as the original of that famous court. Yet as most of, if not all, the members who composed it were also members of the ordinary council, it may be regarded as a sort of committee of the ancient court of Star Chamber; and both Lord Coke (Fourth Institute, p. 62) and Lord Hale (Jurisdiction of the Lords' House, ch. v., p. 35) consider it as only a modification of that tribunal. So also the judges of the King's Bench, in the 13th year of Elizabeth, cite the proceedings of this court under the name of the Star Chamber (Plowden's Commentaries, 393). Yet that appellation does not appear to have been given to it either in the statute by which it was erected, or in another passed in the 21st year of Henry VIII., by which the president of the council was added to the number of the judges. The fact just mentioned, however, shows that the tribunal erected by Henry VII, continued to exist as a distinct court from the ordinary council till a late period of the reign of Henry VIII. It was chiefly designed to restrain and punish illegal combinations, such as the giving of liveries, etc., the partiality of sheriffs in forming panels and making untrue returns, the taking of money by juries, riots, and unlawful assemblies; and it had the power to punish offenders, just as if they had been convicted in due course of law. But toward the close of Henry VIII.'s reign the jurisdiction of the ancient Star Chamber was revived, and the court of Henry VII. became gradually merged in it. The precise period of this revival can not be ascertained. By some it is ascribed to Cardinal Wolsey; and, at all events, the ancient court was again in activity in the 31st year of Henry VIII, as the celebrated act of that year concerning proclamations ordains that of fenders against it may be tried before the Star Chamber. Sir Thomas Smith, who wrote⚫ his Commonwealth of England in Elizabeth's reign, knows nothing of Henry VII's court: it had then become merged in the general council. The judges of the revived court, however, continued to be the same, viz., the lord chancellor, or lord keeper, as president, the treas urer, the privy seal, and the president of the CHAP. XIX. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. council; but with these were associated the members of the council, and all peers of the realm who chose to attend. Under the Tudors the number of judges often amounted to 30 or 40; but under James I. and Charles I. only such peers seem to have been summoned as were also members of the privy council. 367 grave's Essay upon the original Authority of the King's Council; and the article "Star Chamber" in the Penny Cyclopædia. B. AUTHORITIES FOR THE PERIOD The works of several of the chroniclers which serve for the period of the Plantagenets extend also into that of the Tudors, as those of Fabian, Hall, Grafton, Polydore, Virgil, Hollingshed, Stowe, etc. The History of the reign of Henry VII. has been written by Lord Bacon; that of Henry VIII. by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; that of Edward VI. by Hayward; that of Elizabeth by Camden. Edward VI. left a journal of some of the occurrences of his reign. Subsidiary works for this period are Fiddes' Life of Wolsey; Le Grand, Hist. du Divorce; Froude's History of England, 4 Wolsey to the death of Henry VIII.; Sir The bishops also ceased to attend. The civil jurisdiction of the Star Chamber embraced disputes between English and alien merchants, questions of maritime law, testamentary causes, suits between corporations, etc.; but these were gradually transferred to the Admiralty Court, the Court of Chancery, and the common law courts. It was the criminal jurisdiction which rendered the Star Chamber most powerful and most odious. The offenses of which it took cognizance were perjury, forgery, riot, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy; and generally, all misdemeanors, especially of a public kind, which could not be brought under the law. The regular course of proceeding was by in-vols., containing the period from the fall of formation at the suit of the attorney general, or sometimes of a private person. Depositions of witnesses were taken in writing and read in court. But occasionally the process was summary. The accused was privately examined, sometimes tortured, and, if thought to have confessed enough, was sentenced without any formal trial. The court had power to pronounce any sentence short of death. Fines and imprisonment were the usual punishments, and the fines were frequently so enormous as to be ruinous. Toward a later period the Star Chamber sentenced to the pillory, whipping, cutting off the ears, etc. It exercised an illegal control over the ordinary courts of justice. In the reigns of James I. and Charles L. its jurisdiction became very tyrannical and offensive as a means of asserting the royal prerogative; and the court was at length abolished by the Long Parliament in the reign of the latter monarch (16 Chas. L., c. 10), as will be related in its proper place. For a view of the Constitution during this period, see Hallam's Constitutional History, vol. i. The 2d chapter of Brodie's Hist. of the British Empire is useful respecting the reign of Elizabeth. For the Scotch affairs of the period should be consulted George Buchanan's Hist. of Scotland (translated by Bond); Drummond's Hist. of Scotland; the Memoirs of Melvil, Keith, Forbes; Robertson's Hist. of Scotland; Tytler's Hist. of Scotland. For ecclesiastical affairs and the history of the Reformation, Strype's Eccl. Memorials, Annals of the Reformation, and Lives of Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, and Aylmer; Burnet's Hist. of the Reformation; Collier's Eccl. History; Heylyn's Hist. of the Reformation; Foxe's Acts and Monuments; Neal's For farther information respecting the Sardonyx ring, with cameo head of Queen Elizabeth, in the possession This is said to be the identical ring given by Queen Elizabeth to Essex. It has descended from Lady Frances Devereux, Essex's daughter, in unbroken succession from mother and daughter to the present possessor. The ring is gold, the sides engraved, and the inside of blue enamel.-Labarte, Arts of the Middle Ages, p. 55. Obverse of medal of James I. IAC I. TOTIVS. INS: BRYT. IMP: ET. FRANC. ET. HIB: REX. (The title Imperator is to be noted.) Bust of king, facing. BOOK V. THE HOUSE OF STUART, TO THE ABDICATION OF JAMES II. A.D. 1603-1688. CHAPTER XX. JAMES I. A.D. 1603-1625. § 1. Introduction. § 2. Accession of James. § 3. Conspiracy in favor of Arabella Stuart. Conference at Hampton Court. § 4. Proceedings of Parliament. Peace with Spain. § 5. The Gunpowder Plot. § 6. Struggles with the Parliament. Assassination of Henry IV. of France. § 7. State of Ireland, and Settlement of Ulster. Death of Prince Henry, and Marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. § 8. Rise of Somerset. Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. § 9. Somerset's Fall and Rise of Buckingham. § 10. English Colonization. Raleigh's Expedition to Guiana. His Execution. § 11. Negotiations for the Spanish Match. Affairs of the Palatinate. § 12. Discontent of the English. A Parliament. Impeachments. Fall of Lord Bacon. § 18. Rupture between the King and Commons. § 14. Progress of the Spanish Match. Prince Charles and Buckingham visit Madrid. § 15. The Marriage Treaty broken by Buckingham. Triumph of the Commons. § 16. Rupture with Spain, and Treaty with France. Mansfeldt's Expedition. Death and Character of the King. § 1. In the preceding narrative we have seen the liberties of the nation commenced and founded under the Plantagencts, eclipsed but not extinguished under the Tudors; in the present book we shall behold them tending through many dangers to their secure establishment. The reformation having been completed under the Tudor dynasty, the nation had more leisure to devote their attention to their political condition; while the same movement had awakened in a large party not only a desire for farther ecclesiastical reforms, but also for an extension of civil freedom. Fortunately for the people, the sceptre had passed into the hands of a weak sovereign, whose vanity and presumption continually led him to parade that opinion of his absolute sovereignty which he had neither the means nor the ability successfully to assert. Thus, to the ruin of his son and successor, but to the everlasting benefit of the English nation, he provoked and precipitated the decision of the question as to what were the privileges of the crown and what were the constitutional liberties of the people. With the history of the progress of this great debate the following book will be chiefly occupied, for its engrossing nature left comparatively little leisure for other transactions. § 2. The crown of England was never transmitted from father to son with greater tranquillity than it passed from the family of Tudor to that of Stuart, in spite of the will of Henry VIII., sanctioned by act of Parliament, by which the succession had been settled on the house of Suffolk, the descendants of his younger sister Mary. Queen Elizabeth, on her death-bed, had recognized the title of her kinsman James, and the whole nation seemed to dispose themselves with joy and pleasure for his reception. Great were the rejoicings, and loud and hearty the acclamations, which resounded from all sides. But James, though sociable and familiar with his friends and courtiers, hated the bustle of a mixed multitude; and though far from disliking flattery, yet was he still fonder of tranquillity and ease. He issued, therefore, a proclamation, forbidding the resort of people, on pretense of the scarcity of provisions and other inconveniences, which, he said, would necessarily attend it; and by his repulsive, ungainly manners, as well as by symptoms which he displayed of an arbitrary temper, he had pretty well lost his popularity even before his arrival in London. James, at his accession, was 36 years of age, and had by his queen, Anne of Denmark, two sons, Henry and Charles, and one daughter, Elizabeth. His education having been conducted by the celebrated George Buchanan, he had acquired a considerable stock of learning, but at the same time an immeasurable conceit of his own wisdom. He took every occasion to make a pedantic display of his acquirements both in conversation and in writing, for he was an author, and had published, for the use of his son, a book called Basilikon Doron (Baσılıkòv dãpov) or Royal Gift, besides works on demonology and other subjects. These qualities led the Duke of Sully to characterize him as the most learned fool in Christendom, while his courtiers and flatterers gave him the name of the British Solomon. |