this reign has a much more limited operation. I have observed in another place, that the coercive jurisdiction of the council had great convenience, in cases where the ordinary course of justice was so much obstructed by one party, through writs, combinations of maintenance, or overawing influence, that no inferior court would find its process obeyed; and that such seem to have been reckoned necessary exceptions from the statutes which restrain its interference. The act of 3 H. 7, c. 1 appears intended to place on a lawful and permanent basis the jurisdiction of the council, or rather a part of the council, over this peculiar class of offences; and after reciting the combinations supported by giving liveries, and by indentures or promises, the partiality of sheriffs in making pannels, and in untrue returns, the taking of money by juries, the great riots and unlawful assemblies, which almost annihilated the fair administration of justice, empowers the chancellor, treasurer, and keeper of the privy seal, or any two of them, with a bishop and temporal lord of the council, and the chief justices of king's bench and common pleas, or two other justices in their absence, to call before them such as offended in the before-mentioned respects, and to punish them after examination in such manner as if they had been convicted by course of law. But this statute, if it renders legal a jurisdiction which had long been exercised with much advantage, must be allowed to limit the persons in whom it should reside, and certainly does not convey by any implication more extensive functions over a different description of misdemeanours. By a later act, 21 H. 8, c. 20, the president of the council is added to the judges of this court; a decisive proof that it still existed as a tribunal perfectly distinct from the council itself. But it is not styled by the name of star-chamber in this, any more than in the preceding statute. It is very difficult, I believe, to determine at what time the jurisdiction legally vested in this new court, and still exercised by it forty years afterwards, fell silently into the hands of the body of the council, and was extended by them so far beyond the boundaries assigned by law, under the appellation of the court of star-chamber. Sir Thomas Smith, writing in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, while he does not advert to the former court, speaks of the jurisdiction of the latter as fully established, and ascribes the whole praise (and to a certain degree it was matter of praise) to Cardinal Wolsey.