law.
The exception reserved to their 'discretion' of interfering wherever
their lordships felt too much might on one side, and too much unmight on
the other, was of itself sufficient to embrace almost every dispute or
trial" (p. 81).

But, in the first place, this latitude of construction was not by any
means what the parliament meant to allow, nor could it be taken, except
by wilfully usurping powers never imparted; and, secondly, it was not
the ordinary council which was thus constituted during the king's
minority; nor did the jurisdiction intrusted to persons so specially
named in parliament extend to the regular officers of the crown. The
restraining statutes were suspended for a time in favour of a new
tribunal. But I have already observed that there was always a class of
cases precisely of the same kind as those mentioned in the act creating
this tribunal, tacitly excluded from the operation of those statutes,
wherein the coercive jurisdiction of the king's ordinary council had
great convenience, namely, where the course of justice was obstructed by
riots, combinations of maintenance, or overawing influence. And there
is no doubt that, down to the final abolition of the Court of Star
Chamber (which was no other than the _consilium ordinarium_ under a
different name), these offences were cognizable in it, without the
regular forms of the common law.[473]

"From the reign of Edward IV. we do not trace any further opposition to
the authority either of the chancery or of the council. These courts had
become engrafted on the constitution; and if they excited fear or
jealousy, there was no one who dared to complain. Yet additional
parliamentary sanction was not considered as unnecessary by Henry VII.,
and in the third year of his reign an act was passed for giving the
Court of Star Chamber, which had now acquired its determinate name,
further authority to punish divers misdemeanours." (Palgrave, p. 97.)

It is really more than we can grant that the jurisdiction of the
_consilium ordinarium_ had been engrafted on the constitution, when the
statute-book was full of laws to restrain, if not to abrogate it. The
acts already mentioned, in the reign of Henry VI., by granting a
temporary and limited jurisdiction to the council, demonstrate that its
general exercise was not acknowledged by parliament. We can only say
that it may have continued without remonstrance in the reign of Edward
IV. I have observed in the text that