Study On The Court Of Star Chamber In England

The Court of Star Chamber won enough prominence and enough odium in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to obtain formal abolition by act of Parliament in 1641.It has left its name to later times as a synonym for secrecy, severity and the wresting of justice. Star Chamber, in which this court sat was built in the old palace of Edward the Confessor at Westminster in 1347.There are three rooms and a kitchen in Star Chamber, the largest one is the court . Star Chamber was famous for its star decoration.It has a long time for the court coming into existence. At first, it came from the council which was an administrative institution. The council was able to exercise residuary justice which connect with the king closely. It was going to dispatch its function into two parts, a court in star chamber and a privy council during King Henryâ…¦era .After justice Wolsey and Cromwell's revolution, star chamber became an individual court and absorbed some small commitments.There were four types of people in the court, councillors, clerks, lords and cardinals, examiner ,attorney, usher and serjeant as assistant. The cases that came before it really fall into two very general classes: first, cases of breach the public order; secondly, cases of violation royal commands. Riots and slander are the most familiar occasions of Star Chamber activities. The court gathered on every Wednesday and Friday during law term time. The procedure of the court was similar to that of the court of Chancery, it savored far more of the Roman than of the Common law. No characteristic of the Court of Star Chamber has left a strong impression upon posterity than the nature of its punishments. There were of four general types, imprisonment, money fines, public acknowledgment of offenses and public humiliation.The history,function and procedure of the Court of Star Chamber under the Tudors have now been definitively established,and under the Stuart there were no new developments. It also paid close attention to crimes that violates king's peace, such as riots and slander. The purpose of its procedure was to speed process, when more and more cases came before it, the procedure slow down. In order to solve this problem, the lord chancellor made a few of orders to make the procedure quicker. But the king did not want to be bond by the law, as a result ,the court lost its real function, became a tool of the king.Between 1629-1641,the number of offences again the king and the judge were larger, and the punishment of the court was cruel. The most famous case of these ten years was the Prynne case. When the revolution broke out, the long parliament abolish the court of star chamber.The fact is that the court of star chamber was so integral and consistent a part of the system of government of in control of the destinies of England during the sixteenth and the first four decades of the seventeenth centuries, that there could be no opposition to it that was not directed against the whole system of autocratic monarchy. With the extension of this government in church and state, the court of star chamber had grown and developed, and it was destined by the very logic of the case to stand or fall with it. In general , the court was the the safeguard of the weak and feeble.The poor looked to it for aid .Rich and powerful men feared their gravity and discretion. It enforced a high standard of duty on all other courts,and gave internal peace to the country.