Forgery, perjury, riot, maintenance, fraud, libel, and conspiracy, were the chief offences cognizable in this court, but its scope extended to every misdemeanor, and especially to charges where, from the imperfection of the common law, or the power of offenders, justice was baffled in the lower courts. Its process resembled that of Chancery: in State trials it acted on an information laid before it by the King's Attorney. Both witnesses and accused were examined on oath by special interrogatories, and the Court was at liberty to adjudge any punishment short of death. However distinguished the Star Chamber was in ordinary cases for the learning and fairness of its judgements, in political trials it was impossible to hope for exact and impartial justice from a tribunal almost entirely composed of privy councillors. The possession of such a weapon would have been fatal to liberty under a great tyrant; under Charles it was turned freely to the profit of the Exchequer and the support of arbitrary rule. Enormous penalties were exacted for opposition to the royal will, and though the fines imposed were often remitted, they served as terrible engines of oppression.

Fines such as these however affected a smaller range of sufferers than the financial expedient to which Weston had recourse in the renewal of monopolies. Monopolies, abandoned by Elizabeth, and extinguished by Act of Parliament under James, were again set on foot, and on a scale far more gigantic than had been seen before; the companies who undertook them paying a fixed duty on their profits as well as a large sum for the original concession of the monopoly. Wine, soap, salt, and almost every article of domestic consumption fell into the hands of monopolists, and rose in price out of all proportion to the profit gained by the Crown. "They sup in our cup," Colepeppersaid afterwards in the Long Parliament," they dip in our dish, they sit by our fire; we find them in the dye-fat, the wash bowls, and the powdering tub. They share with the cutler in his box. They have marked and sealed us from head to foot." But in spite of these expedients the Treasury would have remained unfilled had not the King persisted in those financial measures which had called forth the protest of the Parliament. The exaction of customs duties went on as of old at the ports.

The resistance of the London merchants to their payment was roughly put down; and one of them, Chambers, who complained bitterly that merchants were worse off in England than in Turkey, was brought before the Star Chamber and ruined by a fine of two thousand pounds. It was by measures such as these that Charles gained the bitter enmity of the great city whose strength and resources were fatal to him in the coming war. The freeholders of the counties were equally difficult to deal with. On one occasion, when those of Cornwall were called together at Bodmin to contribute to a voluntary loan, half the hundreds refused, and the yield of the rest came to little more than two thousand pounds. One of the Cornishmen has left an amusing record of the scene which took place before the Commissioners appointed for assessment of the loan. " Some with great words and threatenings, some with persuasions," he says, " were drawn to it. I was like to have been complimented out of my money; but knowing with whom I had to deal, I held, when I talked with them, my hands fast in my pockets".

By such means as these the debt was reduced, and the annual revenue of the Crown increased. Nor was there much sign of active discontent. Vexatious indeed and illegal as were the proceedings of the Crown, there seems in these earlier years of personal rule to have been little apprehension of any permanent danger to freedom in the country at large. To those who read the letters of the time there is something inexpressibly touching in the general faith of their writers in the ultimate victory of the Law. Charles was obstinate, but obstinacy was too common a foible amongst Englishmen to rouse any vehement resentment. The people were as stubborn as their King, and their political sense told them that the slightest disturbance of affairs must shake down the financial fabric which Charles was slowly building up, and force him back on subsidies and a Parliament. Meanwhile they would wait for better days, and their patience was aided by the general prosperity of the country. The great Continental wars threw wealth into English hands.

The intercourse between Spain and Flanders was carried on solely in English ships, and the English flag covered the intercourse between Portuguese ports and the colonies in Africa, India, and the Pacific. The long peace was producing its inevitable results in an extension of commerce and a rise of manufactures in the towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Fresh land was being brought into cultivation, and a great scheme was set on foot for reclaiming the Fens. The new wealth of the country gentry, through the increase of rent, was seen in the splendour of the houses which they were raising. The contrast of this peace and prosperity with the ruin and bloodshed of the Continent afforded a ready argument to the friends of the King's system. So tranquil was the outer appearance of the country that in Court circles all sense of danger had disappeared. "Some of the greatest statesmen and privy councillors," says May, "would ordinarily laugh when the word,' liberty of the subject,' was named." There were courtiers bold enough to express their hope that "the King would never need any more Parliaments." But beneath this outer calm "the country," Clarendon honestly tells us while eulogizing the peace, "was full of pride and mutiny and discontent." Thousands were quitting England for America. The gentry held aloof from the Court. "The common people in the generality and the country freeholders would rationally argue of their own rights and the oppressions which were laid upon them." If Charles was content to deceive himself, there was one man among his ministers who saw that the people were right in their policy of patience, and that unless other measures were taken the fabric of despotism would fall at the first breath of adverse fortune.