COURT OF (Camera Stellata), a famous, or rather infamous, English tribunal, said to have derived its name from the room in which it sat, the old council-chamber of the palace of Westminster, because the roof was at first garnished with gilded stars. This was a court of very ancient origin, but new-modelled by statutes 3 Henry VII., c. 1, and 21 Henry VIII., c. 20, consisting of divers lords spiritual and temporal, being privy councillors, together with two judges of the courts of common law, without the intervention of any jury. Their jurisdiction extended legally over riots, perjury, misbehaviour of sheriffs, and other notorious misdemeanours, contrary to the laws of the land. Yet this was afterwards, as Lord Clarendon informs us, stretched "to the asserting of all proclamations and orders of state; to the vindicating of illegal commissions and grants of monopolies; holding for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited; and becoming both a court of law to determine civil rights, and a court of revenue to enrich the treasury: the council-table by proclamation enjoining to the people that which was not enjoined by the laws, and prohibiting that which was not prohibited; and the star-chamber, which consisted of the same persons in different rooms, censuring the breach and disobedience to those proclamations by very great fines, imprisonments, and corporal severities: so that any disrespect to any acts of state, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more penal, and the foundations of right never more in danger to be destroyed." For these reasons, it was finally abolished by statute 16 Car. I., c. 10, to the general joy of the whole nation.