ssisted in the
management of ecclesiastical affairs, and, in short, considered (p. 020)
and took action upon substantially all concerns of state. By virtue of
its right to issue orders or ordinances it possessed a power that was
semi-legislative; through its regulation of trade, its management of
loans and benevolences, and its determination of military obligations,
it participated actively in the control of taxation; and, under the
presidency of the crown, it possessed the functions of a supreme
tribunal, whose jurisdiction, in part original and in part appellate,
was widespread and peculiarly despotic.[19]

[Footnote 19: Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional
Documents, cii. See A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council
(London, 1887); E. Percy, The Privy Council under
the Tudors (Oxford, 1907).]

*20. Other Councils: The Star Chamber.*--In 1487 there was created a
special tribunal, consisting at the outset of seven great officials
and members of the Council, including two judges, to take special
cognizance of cases involving breaches of the law by offenders who
were too powerful to be reached under the operation of the ordinary
courts. This was the tribunal subsequently known, from its
meeting-place, as the Court of Star Chamber. In effect it was from the
beginning a committee of the Privy Council, empowered to exercise a
jurisdiction which in truth had long been exercised extra-legally by
the Council as a whole. The relation of the two institutions inclined
in practice to become ever closer, and by the middle of the sixteenth
century the Star Chamber had been enlarged to include all of the
members of the Council, together with the two chief justices; and
since the Star Chamber possessed a statutory sanction which the
Council lacked, the judicial business of the older body was despatched
regularly by its members sitting under the guise of the newer one. The
tendency of the Tudor regime toward the conciliar type of government
is manifested further by the creation of numerous subsidiary councils
and courts whose history cannot be recounted here. Most of these were
brought into existence during the reign of Henry VIII. Those of
principal importance were (1) the Council of the North, set up in
1539; (2) the Council of Wales, confirmed by statute of 1542; (3) the
Court of Castle Chamber, reproducing in Ireland the principal features
of the English Star C