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1487 Pavia, 1525 Salisbury |
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+-------------------------------+--------------------+
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Henry, Lord Montague, Reginald Pole,
beheaded 1538 Cardinal and Archbishop
of Canterbury, died 1558]

6. =The Court of Star Chamber. 1487.=--Nothing could serve Henry
better than this abortive rising. At Bosworth he had been the leader
of one party against the other. At Stoke he was the leader of the
nation against Irishmen and Germans. He felt himself strong enough in
his second Parliament to secure the passing of an act to ensure the
execution of the engagements to which the lords had sworn two years
before (see p. 345). A court was to be erected, consisting of certain
specified members of the Privy Council and of two judges, empowered to
punish with fine and imprisonment all who were guilty of interfering
with justice by force or intrigue. The new court, reviving, to some
extent, the disused criminal authority of the king's Council, sat in
the Star Chamber[38] at Westminster. The results of its establishment
were excellent. Wealthy landowners, the terror of their neighbours,
who had bribed or bullied juries at their pleasure, and had sent their
retainers to inflict punishment on those who had displeased them, were
brought to Westminster to be tried before a court in which neither
fear nor favour could avail them. It was the greatest merit of the new
court that it was not dependent on a jury, because in those days
juries were unable or unwilling to give verdicts according to their
conscience.

[Footnote 38: So called either because the roof was decorated with
stars or because it was the room in which had formerly been kept
Jewish bonds or 'starres.']

7. =Henry VII. and Brittany. 1488--1492.=--Henry VII. was a lover of
peace by calculation, and would gladly have let France alone if it had
been possible to do so. France, however, was no longer the divided
power which it had been in the days of Henry V. When Louis XI. died in
=1483=, he left to his young son, Charles VIII., a territory the whole
of which, with the exception of Brittany, was directly governed by the
king. Charles's sister, Anne of Beaujeu, who governed in his name,
made it the object of her p