The Court of Castle Chamber (which was sometimes simply called Star Chamber) was an Irish court of special jurisdiction which operated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
It was established by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571 to deal with cases of riot and public order crime generally, and all crimes which threatened the security of the Crown. It was explicitly modelled on the English Court of Star Chamber, and it was often referred to as Star Chamber. It took its name from the chamber (which no longer exists) which was specially built for it in Dublin Castle, situated over the main gate.
The Court of Castle Chamber in its early decades was, like Star Chamber, popular with members of the public who, under the guise of complaining about cases of riot or public disorder, brought their private lawsuits to Castle Chamber, which was often swamped with private business as a result. Nonetheless, its jurisdiction to hear private cases was often questioned and was not confirmed until 1634, a few years before it ceased to operate. Its popularity was seemingly unaffected by the fact that it was notoriously ineffective in enforcing its decrees.
In the seventeenth century, Castle Chamber, like its English counterpart, was seen by the Stuart dynasty as a suitable instrument for enforcing government policy and it became highly unpopular as a result. Its use by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, who as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1632-1640) was virtually all-powerful in that Kingdom, as the principal instrument for subduing the king's political opponents, was one of the principal reasons for his downfall and execution in 1641. During the political upheaval caused by the Irish Rebellion of 1641, the court simply ceased to operate, although there is no record that it was ever formally abolished. It was not revived after the Restoration of 1660.
Origins, structure and procedure
While Star Chamber developed gradually over time, Castle Chamber was established by a special commission under the privy seal of Queen Elizabeth I in June 1571. Due to the ineffectiveness of the regular Irish courts in dealing with serious crime, the establishment of a separate Star Chamber jurisdiction in Ireland was a reform which had been proposed by successive Lord Deputies, notably Sir Henry Sidney, who in the months before his recall to England at the end of his first term as Lord Deputy in 1567, helped to draw up the plans for the new court. In time this project gained the support of the leading minister William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and of the Queen herself. In the Queen's own words:
Remit of the court
The remit of the new court was very wide: it had the power to deal with cases of riot, kidnapping, perjury, forgery, recusancy, judicial corruption, the correction of recalcitrant sheriffs and juries, libel and malicious attacks on the reputation of public figures. It did not deal with cases of treason or cases concerning the Plantation of Ulster.
Not all the cases it heard fit neatly into any of these categories: in its early years the court heard a petition against the levying of cess, the military tax (which was much resented by the Anglo-Irish gentry) for the upkeep of the garrisons of the Pale, possibly because it raised questions about the royal prerogative. A celebrated probate case, Lady Digby v Dowager Countess of Kildare, was referred to the Chamber because of an allegation of forgery; the Chamber agreed to hear the case but later complained of the amount of time it had wasted on what was essentially a private inheritance dispute. Likewise, it is unclear what power the Chamber had to hear the charge of domestic cruelty brought against Lord Howth for ill-treating his wife and daughter: the pretext for the hearing was an accusation of perjury against one of his servants.
In Castle Chamber's last years, it was much concerned with cases of misappropriation of Church lands. Again it is unclear how such cases fell within its remit, and this activity should perhaps be seen as part of the Earl of Strafford's wider campaign to curb abuses of power by the "New Irish" nobility, especially the Earl of Cork, whom Strafford regarded as a notorious offender in illegally seizing Church lands.
Discipline of judges and juries
Castle Chamber dealt with a number of cases of judicial corruption: William Saxey, Chief Justice of Munster, was severely reprimanded for corrupt practices in 1597, and Patrick Segrave, Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland), was removed from office for corruption in 1602.