English Legal History and its Materials

View   r4  >  r3  ...
ProcedureofStarChamber 4 - 04 Dec 2014 - Main.MichaelCoburn
Line: 1 to 1
 
META TOPICPARENT name="QuestionsBeingAnswered"
Procedure
Line: 84 to 84
 In perhaps the most notorious case before Star Chamber William Prynne and two co-conspirators were sentenced to the pillory, life imprisonment and had their ears cut off for publishing a book that condemned dances, plays and hunting. The argument here was that this was a direct attack on the king who hunted and also attended balls. [Newell pg. 117] By the time the Long Parliament came to power in 1640 the Star Chamber had become so associated with King Charles's abuses of power that it had lost all support of the people and the legal profession who had once held it in high esteem, and was abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641. [Newell 130]
Added:
>
>		Wikipedia Plans

Below is the draft of what I was planning to add to the Star Chamber wiki page in the "Under the Plantagenets and Tudors" section. In addition I want to delete the claims in the wiki that the Star Chamber sessions were held in secret without witnesses which I don't believe is true:

Defendants were summoned before the Star Chamber under a Writ of Subpoena. The examination of witnesses were conducted in secret by court appointed examiners and all evidence collected was presented before the court in writing. [Cheyney 737-8]

Defendants were given notice of the evidence impeaching them and had the opportunity to be represented by a lawyer and respond to those charges against them. Trials were held public, and verdicts were reached by judges not juries. [Cheyney 737-8]

Despite it later reputation, Star Chamber was regarded as one of the most just and efficient courts of the Tudor era. Lord Coke once described Star Chamber as "The most honourable court (Our Parliament excepted)that is in the Christian world. Both in respect of the judges in the court and its honourable proceeding." [Cheyney 745]

 References

Cora Louise Scofield. A Study of the Court of Star Chamber. University of Chicago Press, 1900


Revision 4r4 - 04 Dec 2014 - 18:13:05 - MichaelCoburn
Revision 3r3 - 21 Nov 2014 - 19:10:48 - MichaelCoburn
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
Syndicate this site RSSATOM