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E-book Star Chamber Matters : An Early Modern Court and Its Records

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Penilaian

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The court of Star Chamber remains notorious even now: commentators sometimes invoke its name to suggest that a judicial body or legal action is not quite lawful, something secretive and illegitimate. The court provoked concern in its own time, too, though its vilification deepened after its death. With roots in the mid fourteenth century, Star Chamber became institutionalized as a judicial body somewhat distinguishable from the king’s executive Privy Council by 1540. Akin to contemporaneous experiments with conciliar justice in other European jurisdictions, though, the court’s ties to the royal council remained close. Star Chamber drew its authorization directly from the monarch and operated outside the procedures of the common-law courts, without juries and with judges drawn primarily from the royal council, supplemented in time by justices of the high court bench. Sitting as a court, the lords heard a wide range of amorphously defined wrongs and crafted punishments at their discretion, just short of death. They adjudicated disputes that arose from many aspects of early modern political, religious and cultural development. Trying both civil and criminal cases over its history, at the instance of both private plaintiffs and royal officials, the court heard quarrels framed as cases of riot, fraud, libel, perjury and more. Star Chamber offered some people relatively fast, flexible solutions to problems that other courts could not address, even while it provided others with evidence of the dangers of royal power when unchecked by law. Indeed, in 1641, a little over a hundred years after its emergence as a distinct judicial tribunal, Star Chamber was abolished by members of a parliament about to embark on civil war and revolution for what they deemed egregious abuses of royal power and law. Today, Star Chamber’s records offer riches to scholars interested in broad swathes of early modern history. And yet, despite the court’s continued notoriety, its own history might still be more fully explored to better understand these records as well as the political and legal conflicts of its time. As the chapters gathered here demonstrate, we can learn much about the history of an age through both the practices of its courts and the disputes of the people who came before them. With Star Chamber, moreover, we have not just any court, but one that came of age and was later killed off on either side of one of the great formative periods in English legal history, in the middle of an era of religious, political and social transformation. We also have a court that left an unusual wealth of documentation, though in records that come with a few challenges of their own.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

347.01 KES s

Penerbit

London : University of London Press., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

233 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781912702909

Klasifikasi

347.01

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Courts

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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