"Star-chamber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her dissent; for she was sprung from old Puritan blood, which had flowed again and again beneath the knife of Star-Chamber butchers, and on the battle-fields of Naseby and Sedgemoor. And on winter evenings she used to sit with her Bible on her knee, while I and my little sister Susan stood beside her and listened to the stories ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... used for private conferences, and which was hung round with portraits of his unfortunate mother, Mary, Queen of Scots; of her implacable enemy, Queen Elizabeth; of his consort, Anne of Bohemia: and of Sir Thomas Hoghton, the founder of the tower. Adjoining it was the Star-Chamber, occupied by the Duke of Buckingham, with its napkin panelling, and ceiling "fretted with golden fires;" and in the same angle were rooms occupied by the Duke of Richmond, the Earls of Pembroke and Nottingham, and Lord Howard of Effingham. Below was the library, whither Doctor Thomas Moreton, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the freedom of the press had, however, an evident intention to monopolise it; for they decreed that "no book should be put in print but by consent of the Classes."—Sir G. PAUL'S Life of Whitgift, p. 65. The very Star-Chamber they justly protested against, they ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... day of the trial; and before the next day's work could begin, a note of two or three lines hastily written at midnight informed the commissioners that Elizabeth had suddenly determined to adjourn the expected judgment and transfer the place of it to the star-chamber. Here, on October 25th, the commissioners again met; and one of them alone, Lord Zouch, dissented from the verdict by which Mary was found guilty of having, since the 1st of June preceding, compassed and imagined divers matters tending to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... uncomfortably arranged. The rooms are small, and the walls are wainscoted, and fancifully inlaid and painted. The ceilings of the best apartments are carved and gilt, and nearly the whole of the floors are coated with plaster. There is a small hall, the roof of which is supported by pillars; and a star-chamber, richly carved and gilt. The only comfortable apartment, according to Mr. Rhodes, is now called the drawing room, but was formerly the pillar-parlour, from its having in the centre a stone column, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... I till nowe heard never nam'd in France, Is for the present a more fearefull coort Then chancery or star-chamber. I want motion; You have made [me] ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... making night to mimic day, and chemistry to ape vegetation. But I then took notice, and still chiefly remember, that the best thing which the cave had to offer was an illusion. On arriving at what is called the "Star-Chamber," our lamps were taken from us by the guide, and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking upwards, I saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with stars glimmering more or less brightly over our heads, and even what seemed a comet flaming among them. All ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... oak press in the still-room, and the key of the still-room is locked away in the linen-press in the green lumber-room at the top of the house, and the key of the green lumber-room is in a drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe in the Star-Chamber, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Sturge, "and custalorum. He'll make a Star-Chamber matter of it. . . . The poor fellow's raving, I tell you. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge at Portsmouth. Approach, fellows, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he led her in and bawled, "Ladies and worser halves, the bride! We won't introduce her round yet, because she'll never get your bum names straight anyway. Now bust up this star-chamber!" ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor. In the next century it became the Great Council of the realm, and it is from this Great Council, in its two distinct capacities, that the Privy Council drew its legislative, and the House of Lords its judicial character. The Court of Star Chamber and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are later offshoots of Henry's Court of Appeal. From the judicial organization of the realm, he turned to its military organization, and in 1181 an Assize of Arms restored the national fyrd or militia to the place which ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... hall their flushed faces and reddened eyes accompanied by rapid, mysterious signals, gave warning to the waiting ones of the wrath to come. Paul and Stockie were the last to be summoned. They found the president and the prefect of studies in the star chamber. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... The Star Chamber, a court of civil and criminal jurisdiction for the punishment of offences for which the law made no provision. It was so called because the ceiling of the room in which it was held was decorated with ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... great bugbear and tyrant of printers—that infamous mockery of a legal tribunal, the Star Chamber—was another gigantic obstacle cleared away from the path of journalism. The Newes Bookes, which, in spite of all difficulties, had already become abundant, now issued forth in swarms. They treated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... secretly gone abroad, and such doings far surpass the means of Varney. But this latter opinion is little prevalent; for men dare hardly even hint suspicion when so high a name is concerned, lest the Star Chamber should punish them for ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... men in the seventeenth century, as a biblical rule, that they positively must commit adultery!' The brother compositors of this drunken biblical reviser, being too honorable to betray the individual delinquent, the Star Chamber fined the whole 'chapel.' Now, the copyists of MSS. were as certain to be sometimes drunk as this compositor—famous by his act—utterly forgotten in his person—whose crime is remembered—the record ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... dined with my wife when in came Mr. Hawly newly come from shipboard from his master, and brought me a letter of direction what to do in his lawsuit with Squib about his house and office. After dinner to Westminster Hall, where all we clerks had orders to wait upon the Committee, at the Star Chamber that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... his "loveing Nephewe Gyles Randall."[54] He seems to have been for some years a minister in good odour and repute, and to have given no occasion of complaint against his doctrine before 1643. He probably was the Giles Randall who was arrested in 1637 and tried in the Star Chamber for {254} preaching against "ship-money" as unjust and an offence against God, since it was, he declared in his sermon, "a way of taking burdens off rich men's shoulders and laying them on the necks of poor ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... all his places at Court; and at the Restoration, never having made an enemy whilst his relations were in power, he was not molested, and lived till 1688. His father had been proceeded against in the Star Chamber, for resisting the payment of Ship Money, and was by Cromwell constituted Clerk of the Hanaper, and created a Baronet.] By the way I cannot forget that my Lord Claypoole did the other day make enquiry of Mrs. Hunt, concerning ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... impulse which leads judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly administered, to throw wide the doors of every courtroom, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial. We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings in America, and no harm would be done by excluding from the courtroom all persons who ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... consisted of fees paid to him for attending to the king's business. "I shall now," Bacon wrote to the king, "again make oblation to your Majesty,—first of my heart, then of my service; thirdly, of my place of Attorney, which I think is honestly worth L6000 per annum; and fourthly, of my place in the Star Chamber, which is worth L1600 per annum, and with the favor and countenance of a Chancellor, much more." Coke had made a still larger income during his tenure of the Attorney's place, the fees from his private official practice amounting to no loss a sum ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... ably engineered by Mrs. Evangeline Heartz that upon its passage she received a huge box of candy, with "The thanks of 5,000 railroad men." While she introduced a number of bills herself, only two of them finally passed—one compelling school boards to hold open meetings instead of Star Chamber sessions, and the present law providing for a State Board of Arbitration. In order to make the latter effective it should have a compulsory clause, which she will strive for in the Legislature ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... could see the limits of the reaction and he knew that, though great and calamitous in proportion to the errors of the Republican party, it had not changed in a day the character and fundamental tendencies of the nation. He would note that the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, the Council of the North, the legislative functions once usurped by the Privy Council, were not restored, and that no attempt was made to govern without a parliament. He found himself the defender of regicide, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... attack on the stage in the "Histrio-Mastix" or "Players Scourge"—which book, by the way, for some unfavourable comments therein on the Queen of Charles I., and the ladies of her Court, for attending theatrical representations, was debarred his rooms (he was a barrister), by the Court of Star Chamber, sentenced to be imprisoned for life, fined L5,000, committed to the Tower, placed in the pillory, both ears cut off, and his book burnt by the common hangman; yet after undergoing all these pains and penalties, he published a recantation ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the stars painted on the dome of the 'Star Chamber' of Westminster Abbey. The Jewish money lenders of ancient London were permitted to deposit the bonds of their Christian debtors in a chamber of the abbey. The Hebrew word for 'bond' being 'star,' the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... it, the origin of the licensing of the press of this country. On the 23d June, 28 Eliz. 1586 (not 1585, as in Strype), {426} Archbishop Whitgift and the Lords of the Privy Council in the Star Chamber made rules and ordinances for redressing abuses in printing. No printing-press was to be allowed elsewhere than in London (except one in each University); and no book was to be printed until first seen and perused by the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... by order of a commanding officer to inquire into matters of an intricate nature, for his information; but has no power of adjudication whatever: but too like the Star Chamber. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Hacket, Coppinger, and Arthington, who seem to have been a trio of insane libellers, and Greenwood and Barrow, whose seditious books and pamphlets were leading the way to all the horrors of anarchy introduced by the Anabaptists into Germany and the Netherlands, all felt the vengeance of the Star Chamber, and were severely punished for their revilings. The innocent often suffer with the guilty, and Cartwright was imprisoned for eighteen months, although he denied all connection with the "Marprelate" books, and declared that ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... those eagle wings, on which, as the poet says, "immortal slanders fly." By the press they spread, they last, they leave the sting in the wound. Printing was not known in England much earlier than the reign of Henry VII., and in the third year of that reign the Court of Star Chamber was established. The press and its enemy are nearly coeval. As no positive law against libels existed, they fell under the indefinite class of misdemeanours. For the trial of misdemeanours that court was instituted, their tendency to produce riots ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... there is an Index Expurgatorius for works partly prohibited, or to be read after expurgation. In accordance with this principle, the licensing of English books had been in the power of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his delegates before the decree of the Star Chamber in 1637, which ordered that all books of Divinity, Physic, Philosophy, and Poetry should be licensed either by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by the Bishop of London personally or through their appointed substitutes. The object of this decree was to limit the reprint ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Baron Verulam and Viscount St. Albans, is called by one of his contemporaries, "the eloquentest man in England." Perhaps those who read his legal arguments before the Star Chamber may not see this eloquence so fully exemplified in them as in his incomparable essays; but wherever he speaks, it is Francis Bacon speaking. It is doubtful if any other man ever lived who has even approached him in the power ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... quite easy for the Kings to increase their royal power. And by the end of the fifteenth century, England was a strongly centralised country, ruled by Henry VII of the House of Tudor, whose famous Court of Justice, the "Star Chamber" of terrible memory, suppressed all attempts on the part of the surviving nobles to regain their old influence upon the government of the country with ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... subjects who had made the Wars of the Roses; he kept down their number with such success that he left behind him only one English duke and one English marquis; he limited their retainers, and restrained by means of the Star Chamber their habits of maintaining lawbreakers, packing juries, and intimidating judges. By a careful distribution of fines and benevolences he filled his exchequer without taxing the mass of his people; and by giving office to ecclesiastics ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... The great Civil War had been preceded and anticipated by the fierce disputes of the ecclesiastical parties. The rash and ill-judged attempt to enforce upon the Scottish a compliance with the government and ceremonies of the High Church divines, and the severe prosecutions in the Star Chamber and Prerogative Courts, had given the Presbyterian system for a season a great degree of popularity in England; and as the King's party declined during the Civil War, and the state of church-government was altered, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... body voting itself supreme and permanent, and in that state levying war upon the King, by whose writs they were first summoned and consolidated; when you can find, I say, in the arbitrary proceedings of the Star Chamber, or of the High Commission courts, actions as repugnant to our fundamental laws as these, I will then agree with you, Sir William Waverly, and admit that a wise and considerate man would doubt what party to choose, as not knowing ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the most effectual remedy that man's prevention can use. For this authentic Spanish policy of licensing books, if I have said aught, will prove the most unlicensed book itself within a short while; and was the immediate image of a Star Chamber decree to that purpose made in those very times when that Court did the rest of those her pious works, for which she is now fallen from the stars with Lucifer. Whereby ye may guess what kind of state prudence, what love of ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... conduct as "innocent and even laudable." In the same spirit, speaking of the arbitary sentences of the Star Chamber, he says,—"The severity of the Star Chamber, which was generally ascribed to Laud's passionate disposition, was perhaps in itself ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are hurrying into a little ante-room, the ceiling of which is studded with stars in mosaic; it is therefore called jocularly, the 'Star Chamber;' and here stands a cast of the famous bust of Henry VII., by Torregiano, intended for the tomb of that sad-faced, long-visaged monarch, who always looks as if royalty had disagreed ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... historic English Revolution, and the crowning of William and Mary, was despite the untiring hostility of the Stuart Dynasty. During this period the lives of Englishmen at home were as the dust in the balance. It witnessed the very heyday of the infamous Star Chamber. It was of Strafford, the bloody instrument (though wearing judicial ermine) of Charles the First, that Macaulay said: 'If justice, in the whole range of its wide armory, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... exclaimed another, "I must see the Chapel and the Star Chamber. That is about all ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... and there kept him (after what manner and fashion it were now long to tell), by the space of eighteen days;[547] and then set him at liberty, binding him to appear before him again the eighth day following in the Star Chamber, which was Candlemas eve; at which day your said bedeman appeared, and was then sent to the Fleet, where he continued until Palm Sunday two years after [in violation of both the statutes], kept so close the first quarter that ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... arrest of the Marechal de Luxembourg, the Princesse de Tingry, and many others. The 'Chambre Ardente'—[The French Star Chamber.]—issued a warrant also to seize the person of the Duchesse de Bouillon and the Comtesse de Soissons, the celebrated nieces of the Cardinal Mazarin, sisters-in-law, both, of my niece De Nevers, who ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... the country was made the subject of legislation, for James I. much disliked the flocking of the gentry, etc., to London, as he said in his address to the council of the Star Chamber: "And therefore, as every fish lives in his own place, some in the fresh, some in the salt, some in the mud, so let every one live in his own place—some at Court, some in the city, some in the country; ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... of romance and daring speculation he went further than his fellows. He was said to have been tainted with atheism, to have denied God and the Trinity; had he lived he might have had trouble with the Star Chamber. The free-voyaging intellect of the age found this one way of outlet, but if literary evidences are to be trusted sixteenth and seventeenth century atheism was a very crude business. The Atheist's Tragedy ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Paul's.' Scarcely less ability, or, rather, we should say, perhaps more correctly, scarcely less adroitness in the choice of a new theme, in the instance of one of his latest literary productions, viz., the 'Star Chamber.' But the readers of Mr. Ainsworth—and they now number thousands upon thousands—need hardly be informed of this: and now that a uniform illustrated edition of his works is published, we do not doubt but that this large ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no longer. He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the Star Chamber: a pair of bellows is hanging before him for the purse; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire shovel on his shoulder, to represent a mace; the king, himself a capital mimic, is splitting his sides with laughter; the courtiers are ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... must not let the sins of my youth find me out now and cast me from Paradise. You alarm me for what your father may think of that book of mine on Oriental philosophy; I would not have him take it with him into his prayer-closet and there in that Star Chamber use it against us in his determination of our suit. Tell him, my Love, that I too have come to see the folly of what I there wrote. Not that anything in the book is false or that I have discarded my opinion of the spiritual supremacy of those old forest philosophers of India, but ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... have been published in Ipswich. Its paper and type are coarse; the name of the author was concealed, because at that time a man who reverenced the Sabbath had a good chance of being brought before the Star Chamber, and of being roughly treated by Archbishop Laud, as an enemy to Church and State. About ten years before, Dr. Young had heard how, for writing his plea against Prelacy, Dr. Alexander Leighton had been cast into Newgate, dragged before the Star Chamber, where he was sentenced ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... Puritan lawyer, published his "Histriomastix," against plays, masques, balls, the decking of houses with evergreens at Christmas, &c., for which he was committed to the Tower, prosecuted in the Star Chamber, and sentenced to pay a fine to the King of L5,000, to be expelled from the University of Oxford, from the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and from his profession of the law; to stand twice in the pillory, each time losing an ear; to have his book burnt before his face by the hangman; ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... national will. References to the charter are as rare in parliamentary debates as they are in the pages of Shakespeare. The best hated instruments of Stuart tyranny were popular institutions under the Tudors; and the Star Chamber itself found its main difficulty in the number of suitors which flocked to a court where the king was judge, the law's delays minimised, counsel's fees moderate, and justice rarely denied merely because it might ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... English language, and published first in England, for only there was discussion free, and the press unfettered. In the reaction over which Pitt and Dundas presided, that envied liberty was totally eclipsed. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; the Privy Council sat as a sort of Star Chamber to question political suspects, and there was even talk of importing Hessian and Hanoverian mercenaries to check an insurrection which nowhere showed its head. The frailest of all human endowments is the sense of humour. The sense of proportion had been eclipsed ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... king's son resumed his rights, and every one who had been in arms against him lay prostrate at his feet. The same nation that had rebelled against the levying of the "ship money" and the proceedings of the Star Chamber allowed Charles II. almost as absolute an authority as ever the King of France possessed. Once cured of her political errors, was England not to be soon cured of her theological errors? After repenting her rebellion against the King, was she not to repent her rebellion ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... period of his presidency (of the Star Chamber), it is too well known how far the enhancements were stretched. 'But the wringing of the nose bringeth forth blood'. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... however, ordered that both charges should be investigated simultaneously. Further proceedings were stopped by the dissolution of parliament on the 15th of June; a prosecution was ordered by Charles in the Star Chamber, and Bristol was sent to the [v.04 p.0578] Tower, where he remained till the 17th of March 1628, when the peers, on the assembling of Charles's third parliament, insisted on his liberation and restoration to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... George's boyhood the struggle between King Charles the First and his Parliament had been getting more tense and embittered. The abolition of the Star Chamber (May 1640), the attempted arrest of the five Members (October 1642), the trial and death, first of Strafford (May 1641) and then of Laud (January 1645)—all these events had been convulsing the great heart of the English nation during the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... again. I not a party, and—though really tried by a kind of Star Chamber—not represented, not allowed to cross-examine, not allowed to call witnesses; and under such circumstances the trial could have but one result, which was that the jury, directed to decide if they were in doubt ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... cardinal's hat. As archbishop he was responsible for the general Church persecution which produced his own unpopularity and downfall, and was one of the main causes of the Civil War. Prosecutions for non-conformity were enforced with the utmost severity. The courts of Star Chamber and High Commission were brought to bear on the Puritans, and Laud became universally detested. The superiority of the king over the law was openly preached, and the Irish and Scotch Puritans were alienated by the severity of the measures taken against them. On the common idea of popular government, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... Green, who parted from him only to meet an agonizing death in the flames, as an arch-heretic. Dee himself was threatened with the stake, and was actually placed on trial for his life before the dread Court of the Star Chamber. But he seems to have had, throughout his entire career, a singularly plausible manner, and a magnetic, winning personality. He succeeded in convincing his judges both of his innocence of traitorous designs and his religious orthodoxy, and was allowed to go scot ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... poisoned; that noble favourite having accustomed his mind, it is possible, to remedies of that nature. His black advice, however, was disregarded, and she was brought to trial at Fotheringay Castle in Northamptonshire, before a tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. She defended herself with great ability, but could only deny the confessions that had been made by Babington and others; could only call her own letters, produced against her by her own secretaries, forgeries; and, in short, could only deny everything. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... property to his youngest son, John, November 13, 1613, proved in 1614.[237] Legal proceedings were commenced in 1614 at Worcester by William about the property of his mother, Elizabeth. A Chancery suit between the brothers was instituted in the Star Chamber,[238] and the case was heard at Warwick, in 1616, before four Commissioners, one of whom was Francis Collins, gent., the overseer of the will of the poet. William the plaintiff was then about forty years old. This is probably the same man who felt injured by his family while supported by his wife's ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... in the enormous sum of L10,000, for saying, when he had horsewhipped the huntsman of Lord Darcy, that he would do the same to his master if he tried to justify his insolence. In 1622 the legality of the court was tried in the Star Chamber by a contumacious herald, who claimed arrears of fees, and to King James's delight the legality of the court was fully established. In 1646 (Charles I.) Mr. Hyde (afterwards Lord Chancellor Clarendon) proposed doing away with the court, vexatious causes multiplying, and very arbitrary authority ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dismissed because of the absence of direct damage to the complainant.' Even the Venetian council often provided for a certain and described hole in the wall through which the anonymous bringers of charges should thrust their accusations. Even the court of star chamber was known to dismiss inquisitions when it found that no wrong had been done. But the statute of interstate commerce appears to issue lettres de cachet against anything in the shape of a railway company—to scatter them broadcast, and to invite ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... real alarmist would have rendered the affair more, rather than less, discreditable to my feminine companion, and I should have been arraigned before the solemn bar of a police-court magistrate, who might even have made a Star Chamber ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... when thou callest me so from your heart; but it is of no use, my poor little one. They have referred the matter to the Star Chamber, that they may settle it there with closed doors and no forms of law. Thou couldst do nothing! And could I trust thee to go wandering to London, like a maiden in a ballad, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opportunity of the established church to destroy Puritanism came during the period of the personal government of Charles, from 1629 to 1640, when Parliament had no meetings, and when the Court of Star Chamber, the High Commission, and the Privy Council were the all- powerful instruments of an administration sympathetic with the high- church party. The oppressions of the Puritans were now at their height, and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... this determination, the earl exhibited an information against Mr. Belgrave in the Star Chamber. The subsequent proceedings which took place on the subject in parliament will be found noticed in D'Ewes's Journal, and quoted in Thompson's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... Quixote, and has persistently refused to swear an information against Fareham, whereby I doubt the case will fall through, or his lordship get off with a fine of a thousand or two. We have no longer the blessing of a Star Chamber, to supply state needs out of sinners' pockets, and mitigate general taxation; but his Majesty's Judges have a capacious stomach for fines, and his Majesty has no objection to see his ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... the language of the Poet, that nobody but himself can in any way come up to him; who is detained there for his bill. Ha! ha! For his bill. I repeat it—for his bill. Now,' said Mr Tigg, 'we have heard of Fox's Book of Martyrs, I believe, and we have heard of the Court of Requests, and the Star Chamber; but I fear the contradiction of no man alive or dead, when I assert that my friend Chevy Slyme being held in pawn for a bill, beats any amount of cockfighting with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... districts. This completely effaced the legal jurisdiction of the nobles. The Circuits thus defined correspond roughly with those existing to-day; and from the Court of Appeals, which was also his creation, came into existence tribunal after tribunal in the future, including the "Star Chamber" and "Privy Council." ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... cultivation. She was displeased with long swords and high ruffs, and commissioned her officers to break the swords and abate the ruffs. None of the nobility dared marry without her consent; no one could travel without her permission. Foreign commerce was subject to her capricious will. The star chamber, the court of high commission, the court martial, the warrants of the secretary of state and privy council, were instruments of terror to the subject, who had no remedy by law. There was no safety but for harmless stupidity or slavish conformity. Individual ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fear, we must hold fast to our heritage as free men. We must renew our confidence in one another, our tolerance, our sense of being neighbors, fellow citizens. We must take our stand on the Bill of Rights. The inquisition, the star chamber, have no ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... hearing, and insisted that the question was of such momentous importance that the public was entitled to hear both sides of it. They were told they might submit in writing any evidence they wished to bring before the Board. They refused to produce testimony for a "star chamber proceeding," and refused to allow their witnesses to be heard unless they ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... (1607), in the fourth year of the reign of James, one year after his marriage with Alice Barnham, an alderman's daughter, "a handsome maiden," and "to his liking." Besides this office, which brought him L1000 a year, he about this time had a windfall as clerk of the Star Chamber, which added L2000 to his income, at that time from all sources about L4500 a year,—a very large sum for those times, and making him really a rich man. Six years afterward he was made attorney-general, and in the year 1617 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Strafford, by a bill of attainder passed by both Houses, was condemned and executed (1641). It was enacted that the present Parliament should not be dissolved or prorogued without its own consent,—an act which Charles reluctantly sanctioned. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. A great Irish insurrection broke out in Ulster. It has already been related how Henry VIII. established in Ireland his ecclesiastical system; how, during ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Cromwell now reigned in England next after the King in both Church and State. He held a number of offices, each of which would have been sufficient for an ordinary man, but all of which did not overtax his amazing energy. He stood absolutely alone, with all the power in his hands; President of the Star Chamber, Foreign Minister, Home-Minister, and the Vicar-General of the Church; feared by Churchmen, distrusted by statesmen and nobles; and hated by all except his own few personal friends—an unique figure that had grown to gigantic stature ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... time English snobbishness was stronger than it is to-day; it was then supported by law and enforced by penalties. To speak of a lord without his title was regarded as defamation, and was punished as such more than once by the Star Chamber. Shakespeare's position, too, explains how this native snobbishness in him was heightened to flunkeyism. He was an aristocrat born, as we have seen, and felt in himself a kinship for the courtesies, chivalries, and generosities ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... considerable triumphs they had gained. The archenemy Strafford had been brought to the block; Laud was in the tower; the leading members of Convocation, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, had been heavily fined; the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court had been abolished; the Stannary and Forestal jurisdictions restrained. But the Puritan movement aimed at far more than this. It was not only that the root-and-branch men were pushing for a generally more levelling policy, but the whole Puritan party ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... to secure the recognition of his absolute monarchy in England. There also he rigorously demanded submission to despotic claims. By abolishing Parliaments, annulling charters, appointing the star chamber, he introduced a reign of terror. In the room of those legislative bulwarks of liberty, which the nation had constructed through the skill and experience of generations, a "grim tyranny," writes Dr. Wylie, "reared its gaunt form, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various |
