24

THE PALACE OP WESTMINSTER.

whole power of the state, and the Parliament was little better than a nullity, or the instrument of regaltyranny. So entire was the obliteration of constitutional forms under this haughty Tudor , that by onestatute he declared the king’s proclamation to he equal to the laws.

One, and that the main cause, of the despotic rule of the Tudor dynasty, may he foundin the fact of the altered balance of the constitution. The House of Peers no longer consisted of thosepowerful lords and prelates who, in former periods, had so often and so successfully resisted theencroachments of the sovereign. So many of the nobility had been killed, executed, and attainted,during the devastating wars of the Houses of York and Lancaster, that only twenty-seven Peers weresummoned to the first Parliament of Henry VII. , and hut thirty-six to that of Henry VIII . Then thisrapacious and sensual king laid his hands on the monasteries, suppressing in all six hundred and forty-five : of these twenty-eight had abbots, who sat in Parliament ; hut when the Parliament of 15th April,1539, was summoned, only twenty spiritual peers assembled.

The reigns of Edward VI. and Mary did not add much to the power of Parliament ; and that ofElizabeth was little more than a display of the will of the sovereign: hut its tranquillity was greatly infavour of the subsequent growth of power amongst the people. Yet when we consider the judicial andlegislative machinery of the state, we shall find how absolute the Government really was at this period.

First was the Court of the Star Chamber,* whose members held their places during the pleasure of

(EXTERIOR OP THE OLD STAR CHAMBER.)

the crown, and might fine, imprison, and punish corporally by whipping, branding, slitting the nostrilsand ears. The sovereign if present was sole judge, and the jurisdiction of the court extended to allsorts of offences, contempts, and disorders, that lay out of the reach of common law. The Court ofHigh Commission was still more arbitrary; and there were other tribunals, civil and military, where the

* Stow says, “ It derived its name from the roof, which was decked with the likeness of stars gilt ; or from an old English word steoran, which“ signifieth to steer, as doth a pilot a ship.” Others derive the name from starra, or Jewish covenants, which were, by order of Richard I. , depositedthere in chests, under three locks. No starr was allowed to be valid except found in those repositories: here they remained until the banishment of the Jews by Edward I .