e ancient
Concilium Regis Ordinarium, or Court of Star-chamber, continued to be
exercised, more or less frequently, notwithstanding the various statutes
enacted to repress it; and that it neither was supported by the act
erecting a new court in the 3d of Henry VII nor originated at that time.
The records show the Star-chamber to have taken cognizance both of civil
suits and of offences throughout the time of the Tudors. But precedents
of usurped power cannot establish a legal authority in defiance of the
acknowledged law. It appears that the lawyers did not admit any
jurisdiction in the council, except so far as the statute of Henry VII
was supposed to have given it. "The famous Plowden put his hand to a
demurrer to a bill," says Hudson, "because the matter was not within the
statute; and, although it was then overruled, yet Mr. Sergeant
Richardson, thirty years after, fell again upon the same rock, and was
sharply rebuked for it." The chancellor, who was the standing president
of the Court of Star-chamber, would always find pretences to elude the
existing statutes, and justify the usurpation of this tribunal.

The civil jurisdiction claimed and exerted by the Star-chamber was only
in particular cases, as disputes between alien merchants and Englishmen,
questions of prize or unlawful detention of ships, and, in general, such
as now belong to the court of admiralty; some testamentary matters, in
order to prevent appeals to Rome, which might have been brought from the
ecclesiastical courts; suits between corporations, "of which," says
Hudson, "I dare undertake to show above a hundred in the reigns of Henry
VII and Henry VIII, or sometimes between men of great power and
interest, which could not be tried with fairness by the common law"; for
the corruption of sheriffs and juries furnished an apology for the
irregular, but necessary, interference of a controlling authority. The
ancient remedy, by means of attaint, which renders a jury responsible
for an unjust verdict, was almost gone into disuse, and, depending on
the integrity of a second jury, not always easy to be obtained; so that
in many parts of the kingdom, and especially in Wales, it was impossible
to find a jury who would return a verdict against a man of good family,
either in a civil or criminal proceeding.

The statutes, however, restraining the council's jurisdiction, and the
strong prepossession of the people as to the sacredness of freehold
rights, made the