Star-Chamber

was an English court of civil and criminal jurisdiction in Westminster, and it originally consisted of the Privy Council, but was remodelled in the reign of Henry VII., and consisted then of four high officers of state, who could add to their number a bishop, a temporal lord of the Council, and two justices of the courts of Westminster. It had jurisdiction of forgery, perjury, riots, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy, and could inflict any punishment but death. Its proce was summary, ana, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., often iniquitous, but the latter king abolished it in 1640. It was called the * Star-Chamber’ from the design on the table at which the Council sat.