The king's government gained the victory, ostensibly, in this contest, and Hampden had to pay the money. Very large sums were collected, also, from others by this tax, and a great fleet was raised. The performances and exploits of the fleet had some influence in quieting the murmurs of the people. The fleet was the greatest which England had ever possessed. One of its exploits was to compel the Dutch to pay a large sum for the privilege of fishing in the narrow seas about Great Britain. The Dutch had always maintained that these seas were public, and open to all the world; and they had a vast number of fishing boats, called herring-busses, that used to resort to them for the purpose of catching herring, which they made a business of preserving and sending all over the world. The English ships attacked these fleets of herring-busses, and drove them off; and as the Dutch were not strong enough to defend them, they agreed to pay a large sum annually for the right to fish in the seas in question, protesting, however, against it as an extortion, for they maintained that the English had no control over any seas beyond the bays and estuaries of their own shores. One of the chief means which Charles depended upon during the long period that he governed without a Parliament, was a certain famous tribunal or court called the _Star Chamber._ This court was a very ancient one, having been established in some of the earliest reigns; but it never attracted any special attention until the time of Charles. His government called it into action a great deal, and extended its powers, and made it a means of great injustice and oppression, as the people thought; or, as Charles would have said, a very efficient means of vindicating his prerogative, and punishing the stubborn and rebellious. There were three reasons why this court was a more convenient and powerful instrument in the hands of the king and his council than any of the other courts in the kingdom. First, it was, by its ancient constitution, composed of members of the _council_, with the exception of two persons, who were to be judges in the other courts. This plan of having two judges from the common law courts seems to have been adopted for the purpose of securing some sort of conformity of the Star Chamber decisions with the ordinary principles of English jurisprudence. But then, as these two law judges would always be selected with reference to their disposition to carry out the king's plans, and as the other members of the court were all members of the government itself, of course the court was almost entirely under governmental control.