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Updated: June 3, 2025
By your machinations, villain, was my brother destroyed by your machinations has his son been imprisoned, and his life endangered by your machinations I myself was censured by the terrible Star-Chamber, and its severest punishments inflicted upon me. You knew not whom you tortured; and had you been aware of my real name, even this wrong might not have contented you. But no matter.
Many a man has lost his ears, and been branded on the brow, for half you have uttered." "Is free speech denied in this free country?" the young man cried in astonishment. "Must one suffer grievous wrong, and not complain?" "Certes, you must not contemn the Star-Chamber, or you will incur its censure," Sir Francis replied in a low tone.
It is writing, it is printing more emphatically, that imps calumny with those eagle-wings on which, as the poet says, "immortal slanders fly." By the press they spread, they last, they leave the sting in the wound. Printing was not known in England much earlier than the reign of Henry the Seventh, and in the third year of that reign the court of Star-Chamber was established.
Such then was the position when in the autumn of 1599 Essex suddenly found himself a prisoner. Cecil however did not think it politic to go to extremities. The Earl was not haled before the Star-Chamber as was proposed in some quarters; it was not till the following June that he was brought before a commission of the Privy Council for enquiry and censure; and some two months later he was released.
"Not much," replied the apothecary; "but I have heard his name often mentioned of late. You need not be uneasy about this young man being summoned before the Star-Chamber. The great case of the Countess of Exeter against Lady Lake comes on before the King and the Lords of the Council to-morrow or next day, and it will occupy all their attention. They will have no time for aught else."
Their miserable victims dared scarcely murmur; having ever the terrible court of Star-Chamber before them, which their persecutors could command, and which punished libellers as they would be accounted, if they gave utterance to their wrongs, and charged their oppressors with mis-doing, with fine, branding, and the pillory. Many were handled in this sort, and held up in terrorem to the others.
Now bust up this star-chamber!" They tittered politely, but they did not move from the social security of their circle, and they did not cease staring. Carol had given creative energy to dressing for the event. Her hair was demure, low on her forehead with a parting and a coiled braid. Now she wished that she had piled it high.
It is not likely that this youth's headstrong temper, coupled with his fantastic notions of honour, will permit him to deny your worship's accusation, and therefore his confession being written down, and subscribed by himself, will be exhibited against him when he is brought to the bar of the Star-Chamber, and he will be judged ex ore suo. Your worship will make quick work of it."
Let him enquire, and he will find that "the former days" of England were days of discord, tyranny, and oppression; days when an Empson and a Dudley could harass the honest and well-disposed, through the medium of the process of the odious star-chamber; when the crown was possessed of almost arbitrary power, and when the liberty and personal independence of individuals were in no way considered or regarded; days when the severity of our criminal laws drew down from a French philosopher the sneer, that a history of England was a history of the executioner; when the doomed were sent out of the world in bands of twenty, and even thirty, at a time, at Tyburn or at "Execution dock;" and when, in the then unhealthy tone of public morals, criminals famous for their deeds of violence and rapine, were regarded rather as the heroes of romance, than as the pests and scourges of society.
He looked upon the Star-Chamber and the Fleet as the means by which he could plunder society and stifle the cry of the oppressed; and it was his business to see that both machines were kept in good order, and worked well. But to return to his habitation. Its internal appearance corresponded with its forbidding exterior.
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