THE STAR-CHAMBER; AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE, By W. Harrison Ainsworth, Esq. Author Of "Windsor Castle," &C. In Two Volumes. VOL. I. Leipzig Bernhard Tauchnitz 1854. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CHAPTER I. The Three Cranes in the Vintry II. Sir Giles Mompesson and his partner III. The French ordinary IV. A Star-Chamber victim V. Jocelyn Mounchensey VI. Provocation VII. How Lord Roos obtained Sir Francis Mitchell's signature VIII. Of Lupo Vulp, Captain Bludder, Clement Lanyere, and Sir Giles's other Myrmidons IX. The Letters-Patent X. The 'prentices and their leader XI. John Wolfe XII. The Arrest and the Rescue XIII. How Jocelyn Mounchensey encountered a masked horseman on Stamford Hill XIV. The May-Queen and the Puritan's Daughter XV. Hugh Calveley XVI. Of the sign given by the Puritan to the Assemblage XVII. A rash promise XVIII. How the promise was cancelled XIX. Theobalds' Palace XX. King James the First XXI. Consequences of the Puritan's warning XXII. Wife and Mother-in-Law XXIII. The Tress of Hair XXIV. The Fountain Court XXV. Sir Thomas Lake XXVI. The forged Confession XXVII. The Puritan's Prison XXVIII. The Secret XXIX. Luke Hatton ````"I will make a Star-Chamber matter of it." `````MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. CHAPTER I. The Three Cranes in the Vintry. Adjoining the Vintry Wharf, and at the corner of a narrow lane communicating with Thames Street, there stood, in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, a tavern called the Three Cranes. This old and renowned place of entertainment had then been in existence more than two hundred years, though under other designations. In the reign of Richard II., when it was first established, it was styled the Painted Tavern, from the circumstance of its outer walls being fancifully coloured and adorned with Bacchanalian devices. But these decorations went out of fashion in time, and the tavern, somewhat changing its external features, though preserving all its internal comforts and accommodation, assumed the name of the Three Crowns, under which title it continued until the accession of Elizabeth, when it became (by a slight modification) the Three Cranes; and so remained in the days of her successor, and, indeed, long afterwards. Not that the last-adopted denomination had any reference, as might be supposed, to the three huge wooden instruments on the wharf, employed with ropes and pulleys to unload the lighters and other vessels that brought up butts and hogsheads of wine from the larger craft below Bridge, and constantly thronged the banks; though, no doubt, they indirectly suggested it. The Three Cranes depicted on the large signboard, suspended in front of the tavern, were long-necked, long-beaked birds, each with a golden fish in its bill.