re inflicted for various sorts of offenses
committed against the personal dignity of the king, or the great lords
of his government. It was considered highly important to repress all
appearance of disrespect or hostility to the king. One man got into
some contention with one of the king's officers, and finally struck
him. He was fined ten thousand pounds. Another man said that a certain
archbishop had incurred the king's displeasure by desiring some
toleration for the Catholics. This was considered a slander against
the archbishop, and the offender was sentenced to be fined a thousand
pounds, to be whipped, imprisoned, and to stand in the pillory at
Westminster, and at three other places in various parts of the
kingdom.

A gentleman was following a chase as a spectator, the hounds belonging
to a nobleman. The huntsman, who had charge of the hounds, ordered him
to keep back, and not come so near the hounds; and in giving him this
order, spoke, as the gentleman alleged, so insolently, that he struck
him with his riding-whip. The huntsman threatened to complain to his
master, the nobleman. The gentleman said that if his master should
justify him in such insulting language as he had used, he would serve
him in the same manner. The Star Chamber fined him ten thousand pounds
for speaking so disrespectfully of a lord.

By these and similar proceedings, large sums of money were collected
by the Star Chamber for the king's treasury, and all expression of
discontent and dissatisfaction on the part of the people was
suppressed. This last policy, however, the suppression of expressions
of dissatisfaction, is always a very dangerous one for any government
to undertake. Discontent, silenced by force, is exasperated and
extended. The outward signs of its existence disappear, but its inward
workings become wide-spread and dangerous, just in proportion to the
weight by which the safety-valve is kept down. Charles and his court
of the Star Chamber rejoiced in the power and efficacy of their
tremendous tribunal. They issued proclamations and decrees, and
governed the country by means of them. They silenced all murmurs. But
they were, all the time, disseminating through the whole length and
breadth of the land a deep and inveterate enmity to royalty, which
ended in a revolution of the government, and the decapitation of the
king. They stopped the hissing of the steam for the time, but caused
an explosion in the end.

Charles was King o