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History 1450-1789: Star Chamber
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > History 1450-1789The court of Star Chamber took its name from the Camera Stellata in Westminster where its sessions were routinely held. The term does not appear to have been used before 1550 and only became popular in 1618 in Ferdinand Pulton's Collection of Sundrie Statutes. The court grew out of the medieval practice of the king's council hearing cases by petition, an alternative to the cumbersome process of the common law courts. Under Cardinal Wolsey's chancellorship (1515–1529), these legal functions of the council were separated from its administrative functions and the business of the court increased tenfold. Privy councillors, sometimes joined by the leading common law judges and lawyers, heard petitions and passed judgment. Most of the court's business in the early sixteenth century was civil, but by the 1560s an increasing number of criminal cases were heard. From 1566 the court also dealt with sedition, and its reputation for hearing politically sensitive cases increased. The court's business declined under the early Stuart kings, but its unsavory reputation for summary trial without jury and use of arbitrary power by the crown increased. Political show trials, such as those of the Puritans Alexander Leighton in 1630 and William Prynne, John Bastwicke, and Henry Burton in 1637, and the cruel and unusual punishments inflicted meant that Star Chamber became a prime target of opponents of Charles I in 1640–1641. On 5 July 1641, the Long Parliament abolished Star Chamber along with that other symbol of prerogative justice, the Court of High Commission.