My attorney must speak with you." The Earl was glad to escape with a fine of L10,000.

It was with a special view to the suppression of this danger that Henry employed the criminal jurisdiction of the royal Council.
The king in his Council had always asserted a right in the last resort to enforce justice and peace by dealing with offenders too strong to be dealt with by his ordinary courts.

Henry systematized this occasional jurisdiction by appointing in 1486 a committee of his Council as a regular court, to which the place where it usually sat gave the name of the Court of Star Chamber.

The king's aim was probably little more than a purpose to enforce order on the land by bringing the great nobles before his own judgement-seat; but the establishment of the court as a regular and no longer an exceptional tribunal, whose traditional powers were confirmed by Parliamentary statute, and where the absence of a jury cancelled the prisoner's right to be tried by his peers, furnished his son with an instrument of tyranny which laid justice at the feet of the monarchy.
[Sidenote: War of Britanny] In his foreign policy Henry like Edward clung to a system of peace.

His aim was to keep England apart, independent of the two great continental powers which during the Wars of the Roses had made revolutions at their will.