There has been a great deal of discussion about the origin of the term Star Chamber. The hall where the court was held was in a palace at Westminster, and there were a great many windows in it. Some think that it was from this that the court received its name. Others suppose it was because the court had cognizance of a certain crime, the Latin name of which has a close affinity with the word star. Another reason is, that certain documents, called _starra_, used to be kept in the hall. The prettiest idea is a sort of tradition that the ceiling of the hall was formerly ornamented with stars, and that this circumstance gave name to the hall. This supposition, however, unfortunately, has no better foundation than the others; for there were no stars on the ceiling in Charles's time, and there had not been any for a hundred years; nor is there any positive evidence that there ever were. However, in the absence of any real reason for preferring one of these ideas over the other, mankind seem to have wisely determined on choosing the prettiest of them, so that it is generally agreed that the origin of the name was the ancient decoration of the ceiling of the hall with gilded stars. [Sidenote: Immense power of the Court of Star Chamber.] [Sidenote: Oppressive fines.] However this may be, the court of the Star Chamber was an engine of prodigious power in the hands of Charles's government. It helped them in two ways. They could punish their enemies, and where these enemies were wealthy, they could fill up the treasury of the government by imposing enormous fines upon them. Sometimes the offenses for which these fines were imposed were not of a nature to deserve such severe penalties. For instance, there was a law against turning tillage land into pasturage. Land that is tilled supports men. Land that is pastured supports cattle and sheep. The former were a burden, sometimes, to landlords, the latter a means of wealth. Hence there was then, as there is now, a tendency in England, in certain parts of the country, for the landed proprietors to change their tillage land to pasture, and thus drive the peasants away from their homes. There were laws against this, but a great many persons had done it notwithstanding. One of these persons was fined four thousand pounds; an enormous sum. The rest were alarmed, and made _compositions_, as they were called; that is, they paid at once a certain sum on condition of not being prosecuted. Thirty thousand pounds were collected in this way, which was then a very large amount. [Sidenote: King's forests.]