Again, p.

538.
One of the most ancient and most established instruments of power was the court of star chamber, which possessed an unlimited discretionary authority of fining, imprisoning, and inflicting corporal punishment; and whose jurisdiction extended to all sorts of offences, contempts, and disorders that lay not within reach of the common law.

The members of this court consisted of the privy council and the judges; men who all of them enjoyed their offices during pleasure; and when the prince himself was present, he was the sole judge, and all the others could only interpose with their advice.

There needed but this one court in any government to put an end to all regular, legal, and exact plans of liberty; for who durst set himself in opposition to the crown and ministry, or aspire to the character of being a patron of freedom, while exposed to so arbitrary a jurisdiction?
I much question whether any of the absolute monarchies in Europe contain, at present, so illegal and despotic a tribunal.
The court of high commission was another jurisdiction still more terrible; both because the crime of heresy, of which it took cognizance, was more undefinable than any civil offence, and because its methods of inquisition, and of administering oaths, were more contrary to all the most simple ideas of justice and equity.

The fines and imprisonments imposed by this court were frequent: the deprivations and suspensions of the clergy for nonconformity were also numerous, and comprehended at one time the third of all the ecclesiastics of England.[*] The queen, in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, said expressly, that she was resolved "that no man should be suffered to decline, either on the left or on the right hand, from the drawn line limited by authority, and by her laws and injunctions."[**] But martial law went beyond even these two courts in a prompt, and arbitrary, and violent method of decision.