8. Jacobean Star Chamber records and the performance of provincial libel

Clare Egan

‘This Court, the right institutions and ancient orders thereof being observed, doth keep all England in quiet.’¹

In keeping with modern and contemporary divisions over how to interpret the court of Star Chamber, Edward Coke’s statement on the court’s role in keeping Jacobean England in quiet can be read as either reassuring or oppressive, depending on the reader’s interpretation. Does it invoke the exemplary nature of the court as an expedient and innovative way to deliver justice aimed chiefly at preventing breaches of the common peace? Or does it carry a more sinister tone that might hint at the court’s reputation for secretive and silencing practices? Although the myth that the Star Chamber was associated with tyrannical monarchical prerogative has been attributed to the work of Whig historians by modern scholarship, the court remains notorious and scholarship is still divided on its role and reputation.² This chapter focuses on private libels, an offence newly criminalized by the Star Chamber in the 1590s, the trial of which reached ‘near-epidemic’ proportions during the Jacobean period.³ For the early seventeenth century, libels – both political (attacking public officials) and private (between everyday individuals) – were unanimously characterized as the ‘pratling’ and ‘hurrying sound’ of envious tongues.⁴ It was particularly important for the Star Chamber itself, this chapter argues, that it practically and symbolically silenced, or ‘ke[pt] … in quiet’, the unruly noise of libelling.

This chapter advances three major suggestions to substantiate the claim above. The first of these is that we pay more attention to Star Chamber libel records as evidence of an overlooked genre of provincial performance. It was frequently observed at the ‘Star Chamber and its Records’ conference in July 2019 that Star Chamber cases cannot always be trusted to tell us what actually happened. This statement tended to be triggered by the vexatious nature of much of the court’s litigation; the elaborately constructed, often contrasting narratives found in the records; and the kinds of ‘dramaturgy’ seen in show-cases choreographed by the elite.⁵ However, taking up the performance-orientated terminology in this last observation, this chapter argues that instead of looking at the court’s records for the truth or falsity of the matters contained there (after all, it is a quirk of the court’s records that most of the case outcomes are lost), we analyse libel records as documenting possible interpretations by a varied body of spectators for performed and performative communal events.⁶ The court was worried about libelling precisely because it was a form of publication shown by a variety of spectator interpretations to cause real damage to reputations regardless of the truth or falsity of events.

While acknowledging and analysing the fictions of the archives, the second suggestion this chapter makes, however, is that we should look again at the veracity of some elements of Star Chamber libel suits. For libel cases, ‘the cause was considered invalid unless a copy of the text or a verbatim recitation of the offending words could be produced by the plaintiff’.⁷ This legal requirement that the words or ‘matter’ of the libel be contained in the bill of complaint and, where possible, that a copy of the original libel be appended to the bill means that the records can contain concrete evidence of libellous content.⁸ The material features of such libel texts speak for themselves now as they did then – they still bear the marks of careful composition, folding and placement, which testify to the veracity of information about their communal circulation found in bills of complaint. Libel texts therefore introduce a tangible counterpoint to the court’s reputation for fictitious or vexatious cases and secretive, corrupt practices, demonstrating that the Star Chamber was meticulously concerned with the specific circumstances of material that threatened to throw England into disquiet.

This chapter finally analyses how the court framed libellous words that were copied into bills of complaint when cases were called up at Star Chamber. It shows that the court carefully reframed such libellous content by taking away its verse lineation and making sure the material contained was not laughed at in the court itself. By removing the communal performance circumstances of the libel, the court symbolically quietened this form of unruly noise. Metaphors of poison and disease were used to characterize libellous communications as the epitome of deceitful speech, and the court saw this as directly opposed to its own style of plain and authoritative speaking. Libels were therefore an important symbolic antithesis to the court’s publicly performed style of being seen to deliver justice. Coke’s claim that the Star Chamber kept all England in quiet demonstrates how important it was for the court’s own reputation as upholder of the king’s justice to suppress the period’s ‘sea of mischiefs … which daily doe flow from euill tongues’: libels.⁹

Star Chamber libel cases as records of performance

As early as 1275, the Statute of Westminster forbade the publication of ‘false News or Tales whereby discord … or slander may grow between the King and his People or the Great Men of the Realm’.¹⁰ From its thirteenth-century origins, the medieval offence of defamation consisted of two distinct forms: either as a moral transgression against private individuals tried in church courts or as a criminal offence targeting the monarch or magnates, outlined above in the Statute of Westminster and referred to as scandalum magnatum.¹¹ However, libelling a private individual was redefined as a criminal offence due to a series of high-profile precedential cases in the 1590s and Edward Coke’s report in ‘The Case de Libellis Famosis’ in 1605.¹² Thereafter, private libel was tried at the court of Star Chamber, alongside cases relating to the slander of monarchy and government. Star Chamber newly held that for private libel the truth was no defence and the offence did not die with the person because libel fell under the court’s jurisdiction over breaches of the common peace.¹³

William Hudson, the author of a ‘Treatise of the Court of Star Chamber’ based on his twenty-five years’ practice as a barrister there, categorized the most common forms of libel, including humorously insulting verses, plays or visual symbols made from horns, books or even playing cards.¹⁴ Libellers read verses aloud, impersonated others or displayed images to public, communal audiences. While scholarship has recognized the novelty of Star Chamber’s redefinition of private libel, significantly more attention has been paid to political libels against public figures.¹⁵ Historians such as Adam Fox have done invaluable work on private disputes, but as Fox points out they should now ‘enable us to move the history of popular literature beyond the study of form and content and towards the analysis of performance and reception’.¹⁶

Following the ‘spectatorial turn’ in performance studies, the audience has become an increased focus for critical attention: ‘where one sits or stands, and how one sees and hears a production, profoundly influence what a play means in performance and how one responds to that performance as a thinking, feeling witness’, not to mention the part played by ‘issues such as class, occupation, wealth, age, religious affinity, and gender’.¹⁷ Just as such factors influenced how each individual spectator interpreted a play on a stage, communal witnesses to the public reading of a libel each made an individual interpretation of its content based on their material and social conditions. Accounts of witnessing such libellous communications contained in the records of Star Chamber give us glimpses of the wide range of spectatorial interpretations possible in early modern communities. Crucially, the legal context of such accounts adds a layer of self-reflexivity to these interpretations because it means that the witness recounts the version that they think will be acceptable and plausible to the authorities.

In the case of King v Lawrence from Compton Abbas, Dorset (1608), a libellous verse was allegedly composed, written and published by the defendants Elizeus Lawrence, the parson of Compton Abbas; his wife, Margaret; Christopher Horder, a yeoman; and John King, a husbandman. The verse, which according to the bill of complaint called itself ‘a litle verse of Stephen Kinge’, mocks ‘King Steeven’ for having married a woman who was already pregnant, having lost a previous marriage arrangement through his lust and clumsiness, and finally having mismanaged his income so that ‘his hundred pound is come to tenn’.¹⁸ Stephen King, a yeoman, and his wife, Edith, complained to the Star Chamber that the defendants had composed and written the verse on 16 October 1607, and on Sunday 18 October, being St Luke’s Day, they ‘did … vnlawfullye fixe & nayle vpp the said infamous libell vppon the church doore in Compton … against the tyme that the people shold resorte to their morninge prayer’.¹⁹ Later that day, the defendants allegedly spread copies of the verse and did ‘themselues reade & cause the same to be read to diuers persons att seuerall tymes both in the howse of the said [Elizeus] Lawrence & elswhere’.²⁰ This account contains elements of performance: the verse was pre-planned and written out, like a script; its location on the church door and the timing, St Luke’s Day at morning prayer, made meaning in staging the libel; a large communal audience was engineered; and when it was read at Lawrence’s house, the identity of the speaker was important. Whether it is true or not, this narrative tells us that libel was perceived as a form of public communication to local spectators in significant communal locations on important occasions.

This libel dispute, as many do, had a backstory in the social relations of early modern Compton Abbas.²¹ The complainants said that they knew Elizeus and Margaret Lawrence were responsible for the verse because it contained information on private matters known only to them and the complainants. These ‘private matters’ related to King’s previous, unsuccessful marriage arrangement mentioned in the verse: ‘In Glostersheire this Grasier good/ He would appease his lustfull strife/ … Which was the cause he lost his wieffe’.²² King claims that the arranged marriage in Gloucestershire was set up by Elizeus and Margaret Lawrence, whereas Margaret says that King overtook her and her husband on the way to Gloucestershire and that he was refused by his suitor because of his drunkenness.²³ Both sides concur that there was a previous arrangement; what King finds offensive is the sharing of this private information publicly, and the shame that the alleged reasons for its failure cast on his masculinity and therefore his public reputation.²⁴ Such records demonstrate that the formation of reputation in early modern provincial communities was publicly performative, fluid and fragile, as well as being tied up in systems of litigation.

While we might question the veracity of Stephen King’s account, one of the defendants’ depositions appears to corroborate it. John King, a husbandman aged twenty-four, admits that he saw the libel ‘on the church doore and tooke it downe as he passed by about his fathers busines not knoweing then what it was’ because he ‘could not himself read’.²⁵ King said he delivered the libel to Elizeus Lawrence, the parson, a little before evening prayer, having ‘forgotten’ about it being in his pocket all day. John King deposed that his father, Walter King, along with Walter Combe and Nicholas Davy alias Apprichard, arranged this delivery by sending for Lawrence to read the libel at Walter King’s house.²⁶ John King deposed that the libel

was begone to be reade in the hall of his fathers howse where his mother in lawe wife to the said walter Kinge … at that time lay in child bedd and soe she also hearinge the same beginninge to be reade, as she lay in her bedd, wished mr Lawrenc eyther to burne the said paper or to carry it away with him or gett out of her company.²⁷

These details further reveal a carefully staged performance in the hall of Walter King’s house where his wife lay in childbed with gathered spectators. In John King’s account, the most prominent spectator, Walter King’s wife, interpreted what she heard as insulting, or at least not fit to be rehearsed in her childbed chamber, and dismissed the party. The verse ridicules Stephen King by claiming that his wife had wept on their wedding day: ‘I knowe not where twas for greif or Joye/ But twas reported twas breeding of a Boye.’²⁸ This hint of scandal over an unwanted pregnancy matched with the location of reading, the childbed chamber, and the occasion, St Luke’s Day and the christening of Walter King’s child.²⁹ Libellous meaning derives not only from the identity of the orator Lawrence, but also the location and timing of the performance, all of which were designed to be actively interpreted by communal spectators.

In John King’s deposition we are given the perspective of a purportedly unwitting spectator who reports the reactions of other witnesses, but his account does not stop there. Although he claimed to be ignorant of the content upon discovering and first hearing the verse, his interest had clearly been piqued. After leaving the childbed chamber, John King reported that Lawrence

went forthe into a new howse adioyninge togeather with Combe, this deponentes father and Apprichard where this deponent thinketh mr Lawrence read [the libel] quite over to them aforesaid, for this deponent beinge in the court fast by heard a readinge, but could not vnderstand what it was because he read it not loud enoughe for this deponent to heare it and this deponent heard not the said mr Lawrence to laughe but thincketh that he heard his owne father King and Combe, and Apprichard that were at the hearinge thereof to laughe.³⁰

This account tells us that when it was met with a disapproving reaction in the space of the childbed chamber, the core group who remained intent on reading the libel had to move to a semi-private location – one which could still be overheard from the courtyard outside, but not clearly. More importantly, this report establishes that ridiculing laughter was also one of the responses to hearing the libel, alongside the offence taken by Mrs King, and John King’s own curiosity roused sufficiently for him to follow the group and listen in.³¹ The examination process sought to establish precisely the range of audience interpretations of the libel upon its being read aloud.

These varied narratives might seem unhelpful if what we were trying to ascertain was the truth or falsity of what happened. However, if we are looking for the range of potential spectator interpretations to the reading of a libel verse, they tell us a great deal. They reveal the communal dynamics: first, between the parson, Lawrence, and the group of men who summon him to read the libel; second, of a woman in childbed with the authority to control occurrences in her populated chamber; and third, the operation of factions dividing the libellers and their targets. These accounts also demonstrate the plurality of communal audience reception, from offence to intrigue to laughter, and interaction with a piece of verse, from finding it to delivering it to reading it aloud to rejecting and burning it, in early modern provincial communities. In terms of spectatorship studies, this reveals how individuals reacted actively and in a variety of different ways to hearing a verse libel read aloud. With a libel these varied reactions, of offence, intrigue and laughter, and the communal dynamics they brought about, were what made the libel publicly notorious and therefore damaging to the target’s reputation. Such accounts of reading and reaction also demonstrate that the court was not only trying to establish that the verse existed, but where it travelled, when and where it was read, and what the interpretations or reactions of audiences were.

Among the multiple interpretations possible, the records also include negative confirmation of where the offence lay; the defendants’ depositions present different ways of excusing the perceived offence. We have already heard John King’s defence that he ‘could not himself read’ the verse.³² In another line of defence, Margaret Lawrence deposed that

her husband did read parte of the writing … to Edward Brookeman and Joane Morres … because this deponentes said husband called [them] … to be wittnesses of the burninge of the said writinge, and they requested to heare it first bycause they would knowe whato they were wittnesses … the said readinge was at her husbandes howse where it was burnt.³³

Elizeus’s burning of the verse would be seen as an appropriate suppression of the libel in the eyes of the law, so seeking witnesses would be legitimate. Margaret also specifies that no more than the two witnesses were present as audience and suggests that Lawrence only read a part of the text. These defences remove the performance circumstance of having a large audience present and deny any attempt by the orator to convey the full effect of the verse. Whether they are real or fictious defences, Margaret’s claims demonstrate that the removal of performance circumstances could be perceived as removing the offence.

The defendant Christopher Horder, a husbandman aged sixty and uncle to Stephen King, gave this account in his defence:

Elizeus Lawrenc tolde this deponent that ther was a letter on the church doore where in this deponentes name was, which made this deponent desirous to heare it and the said Elizeus Lawrence read the same in his owne hall in the presenc of the wyves of this deponent and mr Lawrenc after evening prayer on the sabboath day soe farr as this deponentes name was therein which was twise and farder this deponent neither heard nor cared to heare nor esteemed the same.³⁴

Like Margaret Lawrence, Christopher Horder used in his defence the fact that the libel was not read in full and that his reaction to this reading was not to care or esteem the reading aloud of the verse. As it named him, Horder had a legitimate motivation to hear the libel, which would change a reading from a mocking humiliation of those named into a neighbourly reporting of offensive content to someone who might be harmed by it.

Those composing, dispersing, reading, spectating, reacting to, targeted by and accused of libel were precisely aware of the effectiveness of performance for ruining reputation and knew how to use the denial of performance circumstances in their own defence. From the narratives found in Star Chamber records, we can see that reading a libel verse in public could be interpreted variously as humiliating, offensive, inappropriate, humorous or a reporting mechanism. Even though they are biased reconstructions of (sometimes fictitious) events, they reveal people’s perceptions of the law, of what constituted offence or threatened to cause damage to individual reputation, and of how information was interpreted and circulated in the public spheres of the provinces.

Libel texts as evidence in Star Chamber

In libel cases presented to the Star Chamber, the court required that the content of the libel be repeated verbatim in the bill of complaint or that a copy of the text be appended. In this sense, libel cases did attempt to establish facts based on evidence, and the records include texts which circulated in the provincial communities of early modern England, rather than just the words of the libel copied into bills by legal clerks. In King v Lawrence (1608), the complainants Stephen and Edith King encountered problems getting hold of the libel for use in their case. Christopher Horder’s deposition claims his name was mentioned twice in the libel, but the text appended to the bill of complaint makes no mention of him. The bill claims that despite having ‘gotten into their handes’ ‘part of … [the] libell & wrytinge’, which is indeed filed in the case records separate to the bill, ‘the rest thereof is by the cunninge & subtiltye of the said Elizeus Lawrence & the rest of his said confederates kept from your said subjectes’.³⁵ One interrogatory enquired:

Did not … Stephan King in your hearing demaund and intreate of the said Elizeus Lawrence to see or to haue the said lybell, yf yea, what day was yt, whether was yt not the same saboth day that yt was taken from the said church dore, and about what tyme of the said daye was yt that he so required the same … & what answeare did he then make vnto the said complainant, whether did he answeare him that he could not haue yt, because he had burnt yt … & whether did he then tell the said complainant, Stephan that he thought the complainant should haue some coppyes therof, but the originall was burnt, what coppyes did he meane by these words.³⁶

The circumstances of King requiring the copy appear to be a crucial part of the libel’s circulation and directly connected with the libel being fixed on the church door, discovered on St Luke’s Day and read aloud in the community.

The distinction made in this question between the ‘originall’ and ‘coppyes’ of the libel is telling. Stephen and Edith King’s replication suggests a crucial difference between the original and the copies: the handwriting. The replication alleges that Elizeus Lawrence ‘hath deliuered out in speeches that he would not shewe the complainant the said lybell for feare he would then espye out the handwritting therof’, which the case alleges was either Elizeus’s or his brother Israel’s handwriting.³⁷ The replication does stress, however, that ‘the defendant Margaret deliuered out in speeches in the presence of divers that ther was a coppye of the said lybell which the complainant might peradventure see’.³⁸ These details suggest that both the complainants and defendants saw the ‘original’ as incriminating evidence because it could identify the person who had produced it. Margaret Lawrence’s examination claimed that although she had seen Stephen King come to talk to her husband that day, she did not hear King ‘require the coppye of the said writinge of her husbande’.³⁹ Margaret appears to be very careful to suggest that if he had required it, then he had required a copy rather than the original of the libel.

It seems probable, then, that the libel text appended to the bill of complaint was part of one of the copies made by the libellers after they had read aloud and burnt the ‘original’ text, and the fact that the defendants would let King have a copy suggests it was less likely to incriminate them. One of the interrogatories asks:

Is this note of parte of the said lybell fixed to the byll in this honorable court a true note of parte of the matter of the said lybell, yf not, then shewe wherin yt doth differ, & how many more verses were there in the said lybell as you knowe or cann nowe remember?⁴⁰

This question demonstrates that different versions of the libel text functioned in different ways in both communal and court settings. In the community, the handwriting of the ‘original’ could be deciphered, whereas the copy could not. That the court felt the need to question whether this was a ‘true note’ of ‘parte of the matter’ of the libel shows that to them this copy was also, in some senses, a less incriminating form of evidence, being a step removed from the original libel and only part of the total verse. Margaret Lawrence answered this question as follows:

now she remembreth not the part of the libell annexed to the bill, because it is a good while since this deponent sawe the said parte at her putting in her aunswere to the said bill, but this deponent thinketh it was no true coppy of the writinge that was burnt.⁴¹

Margaret’s deposition uses the court’s own processes as a reason to deny the value of the libel copy: she claims not to know the answer to this interrogatory because it had been so long since she was presented with the text. Her answer shows that although libel texts were referred to in examinations to establish the details of production and circulation, in this case they were only shown to defendants in the initial phase of the court process.⁴² Complainants, defendants and court officials demonstrate a detailed awareness of the various ways that ‘original’ libel texts and written copies functioned, as well as being concerned to establish their value as evidence and their relation to processes of production, publication and circulation.⁴³

Figure 8.1. Libel letter from the case of Robynns v Cornishe (TNA, STAC 8/254/29, m. 1)

On closer inspection, these libel texts also still communicate as material objects designed to facilitate widespread circulation in their communal circumstances. In the case of Robbyns v Cornishe (1610), from Whitstone, Cornwall, the text appended to the bill of complaint was the ‘original’ libel and its material features provide evidence as to its communal circulation.⁴⁴ In this case, Walter Robbyns, a yeoman, accused John Cornishe, a clerk, and others of writing a libellous letter to him. The libellous letter purported to be a friendly warning that Robbyns’s wife and mother-in-law had been having illicit relations with another man in their house. The bill of complaint repeated the contents of the letter verbatim, but the records of the case also contain the letter itself. (See figure 8.1 above.)

The top section of the document has been torn away along a fold, but on the section that remains intact the creases where the letter has been folded are clearly visible. The fold along the bottom section shows the letter direction, designed to be public-facing when the letter is sent. The superscription reads:

And so I do wish you all | your ffrind to vse

to have a respect to it when | at all times

soever god shall you call | O: D:⁴⁵

However, where the fold has been made at the upper edge of this superscription the last line of the letter content would also be left visible when the letter was sent. The ostensibly private line reads: ‘dyscreditt is to them bothe. so ffarewell’.⁴⁶ In other words, the line is clearly suggestive of the scandalous contents of the letter and has been left visible to identify the content to anyone discovering the folded letter. Letters and other literary forms with exterior directions suggestive of libellous contents are frequently described in other bills of complaint where they are reported to have been left lying in the streets to be found and taken up by passers-by.⁴⁷ The material features of the text appended to the bill in Robbyns v Cornishe indicate how this content could circulate in the community; this suggests that we should pay more attention to the materiality of such ‘original’ libel texts as evidence that can speak for itself.

We can also compare appended texts to the content of libels copied into bills of complaint. In the case of King v Lawrence, there is a small difference between the two versions: the bill gives the first lines of the libel verse as ‘Gentlemen all I will begin a litle verse of Stephen Kinge’, whereas the appended text has ‘A litle verse by Steeven Kinge’.⁴⁸ Although the difference between a verse ‘of’ or a verse ‘by’ may seem negligible, the fact that ‘personating’ or impersonation of targets was one of the major forms for private libel makes it more significant.⁴⁹ Other cases feature the target caricatured and impersonated with a speaking part in libellous verses.⁵⁰ Perhaps the first two lines of the verse in King v Lawrence set up the rest of the poem as delivered by an impersonation of King. The little verse by Stephen King in performance could include an orator impersonating King delivering a humiliating story about himself, which opens ‘I tell you a thing of Kings Steeven/ Who married a wiffe that had noe livinge’.⁵¹ Whether or not this difference between ‘of’ and ‘by’ was meaningful for communal performance, it highlights the potential for differences between an appended text and the copying of libellous content into bills of complaint. If an appended text was evidence of libel, what did the copying of libellous words into the bill of complaint add to the case?

Styles of speech at Star Chamber

While a copy of the libel is appended to the bill of complaint in the case of King v Lawrence, the bill itself only repeats the first two lines of the libel verse because, it says, the ‘vnlawfull and filthie libell [is] not fytt to be rehearsed in this honerable courte’.⁵² The phrase ‘rehearsed in … courte’ directs us to the hearing of the case in the courtroom and its theatrical potential; to copy a libel text into a bill of complaint verbatim was to ensure its being read out in court.⁵³ The majority of bills do contain the words of the libel in full, but in some cases the content was judged too rude to be permissible. This shows us that it was important to have the libel copied into the bill of complaint, but also that the court was sensitive to what rereading a libel in the courtroom did in terms of perpetuating and reperforming its contents. The Star Chamber’s controlled repetition of libellous noise seems to exploit the slippage between the two meanings of the term ‘rehearse’, both to report, recite, narrate at length and to practice something for public performance; by reciting them the court wants to acknowledge the performance potential of such words while rebranding them as criminal.⁵⁴ The court exploited the difference between performing libels in communal public spaces with a multiplicity of audience reactions and repeating those same words in an honourable courtroom to the silent reception of authority figures.

Visually and formally, the court changed libels when they copied them into bills of complaint: they very rarely preserved the verse lineation of libels when they were given in bills, whereas when they were appended to the bill they almost always retained their original format or lineation.⁵⁵ This might be for reasons of economy; bills of complaint are usually long and densely packed on to one large piece of vellum, so retaining verse lineation wastes a lot of space. However, it does impact how verse libels appear and how they are read aloud – an unlineated poem makes it harder for the orator to know where to place emphasis, such as on rhymed words at the end of lines. The most common practice was to copy the text into the bill in full. However, some bills just gave a few lines, like in King v Lawrence, and others gave a tactful summary of content if the libel was deemed too rude. Alastair Bellany reports that in the case of the Staines fiddlers, ‘Attorney General Sir Robert Heath circulated written copies of the offending songs to the assembled lords of the council, thus avoiding the awkwardness of reading the libels aloud in open court’.⁵⁶ When cases were heard at court, it mattered how the libellous words were presented to those assembled, both visually and aurally.

Whether the libellous words were read out or circulated, one thing was certain: the court of Star Chamber was ‘a formal and orderly assemblage’ where ‘all speeches made were in restrained and sober language and in the midst of the profound silence of all present except the speaker’.⁵⁷ Cheyney points out that this sobriety and silence was in stark contrast to other courts of the period in which judges were ‘often noisy, hectoring, coarse-grained and foul-mouthed’.⁵⁸ The silence of those listening meant, in particular, no laughter – a crucial stipulation in libel cases where laughter at libellous content repeated at court would undermine the case. Cheyney gives multiple examples of the Star Chamber’s attempts to deny mirth and merriment, including an example of a case heard in June 1602 where the rules were broken:

Certain ridiculous matter inserted by the plaintiff in his appeal moved the court to momentary laughter. The lord keeper said, “Although it be goode to be merrye some time, and this be St. Barnabas’ daye, the longest daye in the year, yet let us not spende the whole day in this place with wordes to no purpose”, and so they returned to work.⁵⁹

The Star Chamber’s insistence on a silent audience that did not laugh and court proceedings that used words in a restrained and purposeful manner deliberately contrasts to libellous words and spectatorial reactions in their communal contexts. For the person libelled the court hearing reperformed the libel as a criminal utterance and thus restored their reputation. However, libel cases can also be seen as part of the court’s wider sense of its own role and reputation – its style of administering justice.

The court of Star Chamber conducted its hearings with pride for the dignity and authority of the court in its own right.⁶⁰ As administrators of justice, court officials were to conduct their proceedings not only without laughter but also without grand rhetoric or elaborate speeches. William Hudson stated that it

cannot be denied that there is no bar of pleading which yieldeth so large a scope to exercise a good orator, as th[is] court; the usual subject being the defence of honour and honesty. But the grave chancellor Ellesmere, affecting matter rather than affectation of words, tied the same to laconical brevity; an honour to the court of justice, to be swayed rather by ponderous reasons than fluent and deceitful speeches.⁶¹

Hudson specifies that, because the court was hearing cases that defended and restored honour by honest means, the style in which it did so should be the opposite of those words that damaged honourable reputations in the first place.

Adopting this fashion of conducting court procedure, Hudson claimed, should be the responsibility of any ‘grave lawyer’ and all those involved in the court, but the lord chancellor placed above all in the court in authority was also crucially to act as the regulating ‘mouth of the court’.⁶² As such, the lord chancellor must appoint and call counsel to speak at the bar and keep general rule and order when they did so. Speaking of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, whom Hudson championed as the model of Star Chamber’s unique brand of justice, Hudson recalled that if the counsel were to ‘wander into vain circumlocutions or iterations, that grave judge w[ould] tie them to a point which maketh the resolution not difficult’.⁶³ The lord chancellor regulated the speech of the court and its officials just as the court itself regulated the language of the nation; conduct at Star Chamber was the model of appropriately regulated speech. According to Hudson, the very selection by the chancellor of those that spoke at the bar was deliberately tailored to cultivate this plain-speaking style:

For that the lord chancellor being careful that the court should not be troubled either with silly or ignorant barristers, or such as were idle and full of words, and not careful of the truth of their informations … [would] appoint … men of sincerity and experience.⁶⁴

Even the barristers of the court were chosen for their language and style at the bar, and this especially privileged those who succinctly and lucidly expressed the truth of the matter. In his own practice at the court, Hudson was known to be concise, ‘avoiding grandiloquence, which he clearly detested and for which he tacitly condemned Francis Bacon’.⁶⁵ The words of the bills and proceedings that surrounded libels in the Star Chamber, then, were vital in counteracting the offence of libel. The court’s words must specifically highlight the ‘fluent and deceitful’ nature of libellous constructions by being in stark contrast to them.

At the heart of the matter of the style of speech was the Star Chamber’s role in delivering justice. Hudson, among others, drew particular attention to the court’s star-spangled ceiling as a metaphor for how its representative authority functioned:

Camera Stellata … is most aptly named … because the stars have no light but what is cast upon them from the sun by reflection, [the court] being his [Majesty’s] representative body, and as his Majesty himself was pleased to say … representation must needs cease when the person is present. So in the presence of his great majesty, the which is the sun of honour and glory, the shining of those stars is put out.⁶⁶

This court’s day-to-day ‘shining’ was thus borrowed from a higher source, the king, but Hudson’s statement reminds us that monarchical power was being represented, or performed, whenever the court was in session.

James I resolved to appear at the Star Chamber in person for the first time in 1616, fourteen years into his reign, to make a point about monarchical power, the court system and its judges.⁶⁷ To the judges, James’s messages were particularly pointed.⁶⁸ First, do justice ‘vprightly’ because you will have to answer to both God and the king. Second, do justice ‘indifferently’, acting ‘without delay, partialitie, feare or bribery, with stout and vpright hearts, with cleane and vncorrupt hands’.⁶⁹ Third, remember that courts have judges, not one judge, so that they can give considered, collective sentences. On the second point, James elaborated that judges should do justice indifferently because their role was not as ‘makers of Law’, but as ‘Interpretours of Law’.⁷⁰ This distinction was crucial for James:

As Kings borrow their power from God, so Iudges from Kings … And as no King can discharge his accompt to God, vnlesse he make conscience not to alter, but to declare and establish the will of God: So Iudges cannot discharge their accompts to Kings, vnlesse they take the like care, not to take vpon them to make Law, but … to declare what the Law is.⁷¹

James’s emphasis on the manner in which royal courts and their judges should deliver justice is significant; judges were the orators, the mouthpieces that represented the monarch’s power. They were, as James further specified, ‘iudges, to declare, and not to make Law’; ‘for when you make a Decree neuer heard of before, you are Law-giuers, and not Law-tellers’.⁷² This speech was James’s attempt to curb the power of his judges, but it stresses the symbolic importance of speech, performance and representation, by both kings and judges, in the royal prerogative courts. The style of speech at the court of Star Chamber, as the representative of monarchical prerogative, was crucially important to the symbolic perception of law and justice in Jacobean England.

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Closer examination of Star Chamber libel cases reveals narratives of spectatorship which suggest the danger of this new form of libelling was as a performed and performative genre. Whether fictional or factual, the narratives we find in Star Chamber libel records tell us about the perceived nature of offensive material, the way reputation was formed and damaged in the provinces and the way that those involved in libel cases, on both sides, understood and tried to manipulate the law. The records, moreover, do contain evidential documents when it comes to libels. Paying attention to these libel texts as material objects, as well as how complainants, defendants and court officials discussed them, counters the court’s reputation for fictional and vexatious litigation. ‘Original’ libel texts appended to bills of complaint speak for themselves now as they did then through their folds, creases and textual variants compared to libellous words copied into bills of complaint. Additionally, libels copied into bills tell us a great deal about how the court stage-managed the hearing of libel cases when they were called up. The careful framing of libellous words and the removal of audience laughter in reaction were crucial for punishing libels, but also for the court’s own reputation for delivering justice in a concise, plain-speaking, and therefore honourable, style. The court was the representative of monarchical authority, of justice and mercy, and therefore it must declare the law in the right manner.

Ferdinando Pulton’s 1609 treatise De Pace Regis et Regni describes libellers pouring out their ‘venim in writing … [and] by son[g]s, scofs, iests, or taunts: & diuers times by hanging of pictures of reproach’; the libeller is a ‘secret canker’ that ‘priuily stingeth’ his targets and libellous words are a ‘foule puddle that ouzeth fro[m] the … corrupt gogmire, & distelleth out of a heart … infected with malice & enuie’.⁷³ Edward Coke likewise characterized the libeller as someone who poisoned his adversary and wrote that one could spot a libeller by ‘shipwreck of conscience’.⁷⁴ Such metaphors for libel demonstrate the perception of it as the lowest and most deceitful form of speech. In order to be the open, honourable mechanism for justice in the stead of a divine-right monarch such as James I, it was particularly pressing for the Star Chamber not only to uphold high standards of speech and conduct, but also directly and symbolically to oppose itself to such foul, corrupt and venomous utterances as libels.