Law Courts 211
members, more upon the character of the king and whether
the king controlled It or was controlled by it. Its value
was great throughout the middle ages and during parts
of the Tudor period. Naturally the common-law judges
were jealous of it and there was much agitation against
it in Parliament; but agitation was in vain while this
criminal justice was exercised moderately and well.1
The civil jurisdiction of the Council, like its criminal
jurisdiction and the appellate jurisdiction of the House of
Lords, had its root in the idea that the king was the source
of law, and in his administration of the law through his
court. This original undeveloped court or council gave
1 This^ criminal jurisdiction of the Council, as well as its growing civil
jurisdiction, was meeting with great opposition in the fourteenth century,
Statutes to limit or abolish it were passed in 1331, 1351, 1354* 1363, 1364,
1368. Later under Henry IV. and Henry V. the House of Commons
brought in bills to the same end, but the king vetoed them. But Par-
liament was inconsistent and showed on several occasions that it was
glad to have a court which could act in this summary way. There were
notable instances in 1363, 1388, 1430, and 1453. t Hence it_is hard to tell
whether by the end of the fifteenth century the criminal jurisdiction of the
Council was legal or not. By that time the efforts against it had ceased*
and the people seem to have become reconciled to its moderate use of this
power. But the fourteenth-century statutes were unrepealed and were
used by the Long Parliament as a ground for abolishing the Star Cham-
ber. This was the name used in later history for the Council when acting
as a court, and the name was of ancient origin: in Westminster, "a new
pile of buildings, between the great hall and the palacey and next to the
exchequer receipt, was begun at least as early as 1346. ... It was ex-
pressly appointed for the use of the council, and was thenceforth so used.
It was called the 'star chamber' from the first, though it was quite as
often referred to as 'the council chamber next to the receipt of the ex-
chequer.'"—J. F. Baldwin, Antiquities of the King's Council, English His-
torical Review, xxL, 16. Under the Stuarts, all the evil possibilities of the
court were realised; controlled by a despotic sovereign, it invaded the
liberty of the subject and did the exact opposite of its earlier service of
protecting the people against oppression. Consequently the Long Par-
liament, in 1641, so regulated the Council's judicial capacity as to abol-
ish this court. The idea, which obtained at this time, that the Star Cham-
ber Court originated in the statute of Henry VII. (1487), which placed
this criminal jurisdiction in the hands of certain specified men—most of
them councillors—and which, for a time, practically took this work from
the Council as a whole, was without historical foundation. See further
J. S. Leadam, Select Cases in the Star Chamber, pp. ix.-lxxi. (Selden Soci-
ety, vol. xvi) It should be remembered that the Star Chamber never
became a court and jurisdiction separate from the Council in any such
way as the Court of Chancery did. To the end it was little else than the
Council acting in its judicial capacity. Hence its abolishment nearly
wiped out the judicial functions of the Council.