In the long history of British criminal jurisprudence, there was only one tribunal that ever adopted a practice of forcing counsel upon an unwilling defendant in a criminal proceeding. The tribunal was the Star Chamber. That curious institution, which flourished in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, was of mixed executive and judicial character, and characteristically departed from common-law traditions. For those reasons, and because it specialized in trying "political" offenses, the Star Chamber has for centuries symbolized disregard of basic individual rights.

[Footnote 17. "The court of star chamber was an efficient, somewhat arbitrary arm of royal power. It was at the height of its career in the days of the Tudor and Stuart kings. Star Chamber stood for swiftness and power; it was not a competitor of the common law so much as a limitation on it - a reminder that high state policy could not safely be entrusted to a system so chancy as English law. . . ." L. Friedman, A History of American Law 23 (1973). See generally 5 W. Holdsworth, A History of English Law 155-214 (1927).]

The Star Chamber not merely allowed but required defendants to have counsel. The defendant's answer to an indictment was not accepted unless it was signed by counsel. When counsel refused to sign the answer, for whatever reason, the defendant was [422 U.S. 806, 822] considered to have confessed.

[Footnote 18. "The proceedings before the Star Chamber began by a Bill `engrossed in parchment and filed with the clerk of the court.' It must, like the other pleadings, be signed by counsel. . . . However, counsel were obliged to be careful what they signed. If they put their hands to merely frivolous pleas, or otherwise misbehaved themselves in the conduct of their cases, they were liable to rebuke, suspension, a fine, or imprisonment." Holdsworth, supra, n. 17, at 178-179. Counsel, therefore, had to be cautious that any pleadings they signed would not unduly offend the Crown. See 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 340-341 (1883).
This presented not merely a hypothetical risk for the accused. Stephen gives the following account of a criminal libel trial in the Star Chamber:

"In 1632 William Prynne was informed against for his book called Histrio Mastix. Prynne's answer was, amongst other things, that his book had been licensed, and one of the counsel, Mr. Holbourn, apologised, not without good cause, for his style. . . . His trial was, like the other Star Chamber proceedings, perfectly decent and quiet, but the sentence can be described only as monstrous. He was sentenced to be disbarred and deprived of his university degrees; to stand twice in the pillory, and to have one ear cut off each time; to be fined 5,000 pounds; and to be perpetually imprisoned, without books, pen, ink, or paper. . . .
"Five years after this, in 1637, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton, were tried for libel, and were all sentenced to the same punishment as Prynne had received in 1632, Prynne being branded on the cheeks instead of losing his ears.
"The procedure in this case appears to me to have been as harsh as the sentence was severe, though I do not think it has been so much noticed. . . . Star Chamber defendants were not only allowed counsel, but were required to get their answers signed by counsel. The effect of this rule, and probably its object was, that no defence could be put before the Court which counsel would not take the responsibility of signing - a responsibility which, at that time, was extremely serious. If counsel would not sign the defendant's answer he was taken to have confessed the information. Prynne's answer was of such a character that one of the counsel assigned to him [422 U.S. 806, 823] refused to sign it at all, and the other did not sign it till after the proper time. Bastwick could get no one to sign his answer. Burton's answer was signed by counsel, but was set aside as impertinent. Upon the whole, the case was taken to be admitted by all the three, and judgment was passed on them accordingly. . . ." Stephen, supra, at 340-341.

That Prynne's defense was foreclosed by the refusal of assigned counsel to endorse his answer is all the more shocking when it is realized that Prynne was himself a lawyer. I. Brant, The Bill of Rights 106 (1965). On the operation of the Star Chamber generally, see Barnes, Star Chamber Mythology, 5 Am. J. Legal Hist. 1-11 (1961), and Barnes, Due Process and Slow Process in the Late Elizabethan-Early Stuart Star Chamber, 6 Am. J. Legal Hist. 221-249, 315-346 (1962).]

Stephen commented on this procedure: "There is something specially repugnant to justice in using rules of practice in such a manner as [422 U.S. 806, 823] to debar a prisoner from defending himself, especially when the professed object of the rules so used is to provide for his defense." 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 341-342 (1883). The Star Chamber was swept away in 1641 by the revolutionary fervor of the Long Parliament. The notion of obligatory counsel disappeared with it.

Excerpted from THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, ELEVENTH ED. (1911), Vol XXV, p. 795, STAR CHAMBER:

STAR CHAMBER, the name given in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to an English court of justice. ...
The origin and early history of the court are somewhat obscure. ...
It is in the reign of Edward III, after an act of 1341, that we first hear of the chancellor, treasurer, justices and other members of the king's council exercising jurisdiction in the old chamber or chambre de estoiles, at Westminster. ... Hitherto such acts of parliament as had recognized this jurisdiction had done so only by way of limitation or prohibition, but in 1453, about the time when the distinction between the ordinary and the privy council first became apparent, an act was passed empowering the chancellor to enforce the attendance of all persons summoned by the privy seal before the king and his council in all cases not determinable by common law. At this time, then, the jurisdiction of the council was recognized as supplementry to that of the ordinary courts of law. ...
This [entrusting wider powers to the council] was the object of the famous act of 1487, which was incorrectly quoted by the lawyers of the long parliament as creating the court of the star chamber, which was in reality of earlier origin.
The act of 1487 (3 Hen. VII) created a court composed of seven persons, the chancellor, the treasurer, the keeper of the privy seal, or any two of them, with a bishop, a temporal lord and the two chief justices, or in their absence two other justices. It was to deal with cases of "unlawful maintainance, giving of licences, signs and tokens, great riots, unlawful assemblies"; in short with all offences against the law which were too serious to be dealt with by the ordinary courts. The jurisdiction thus entrusted to this committee of the council was not supplementary, therefore, like that granted in 1453, but it superseded the ordinary courts of law in cases where these were too weak to act. The act simply supplied machinery for the exercise, under special circumstances, of that extraordinary penal jurisdiction which the council had never ceased to possess. By an act of 1529 an eighth member, the president of the council, was added to the star chamber, the jurisdiction of which was at the same time confirmed. At this time the court performed a very necessary and valuable work in punishing powerful offenders who could not be reached by the ordinary courts of law. It was found very useful by Cardinal Wolsey, and a little later Sir Thomas Smith says its object was "to bridle such stout noblemen or gentlemen who would offer wrong by force to any manner of men, and cannot be content to demand or defend the right by order of the law."
It is popularly supposed that the star chamber, after an existence of about fifty years, disappeared towards the end of the reign of Henry VIII, the powers obtained by the act of 1487 being not lost, but reverting to the council as a whole. ... The act of 1540, which gave the king's proclamation the force of law, enacted that offenders against them were to be punished by the usual officers of the council, together with some bishops and judges "in the star chamber or elsewhere." ... During the reign of Elizabeth [,] Sir Thomas Smith remarks that juries misbehaving "were many times commanded to appear in the star chamber, or before the privy council for the matter." The uncertain composition of the court is well shown by Sir Edward Coke, who says that the star chamber is or may be compounded of three several councils: (1) the lords and others of the privy council; (2) the judges of either bench and the barons of the exchequer; (3) the lords of parliament, who are not, however, standing judges of the court. ...
The jurisdiction of the star chamber was as vague as its constitution. Hudson says it is impossible to define it without offending the supporters of the prerogative by a limitation of its powers, or the lawyers by attributing to it an excessive latitude. In practice its jurisdiction was almost unlimited. It took notice of riots, murder, forgery, felony, perjury, fraud, libel and slander, duels and acts tending to treason, as well as of some civil matters, such as disputes between English and foreign merchants, and testamentary cases; in fact, as Hudson says, "all offenses may be here examined and punished if the king will." Its procedure was not according to the common law. It dispensed with the encumbrance of a jury; it could proceed on rumor alone; it could apply torture; it could inflict any penalty but death. It was thus admirably calculated to be a support of order against anarchy, or of despotism against individual and national liberty. During the Tudor period it appeared in the former light, under the Stuarts in the latter. ... Under James I. and Charles I. ...; the star chamber became the great engine of the royal tyranny. Hateful and excessive punishments were inflicted on those brought before the court, notable among whom were Prynne, Bastwick and Burton, and the odium which it gathered around it was one of the causes which led to the popular discontent against Charles I. As it became more unpopular its jurisdiction was occasionally questioned. ... It was abolished by an act of parliament of July 1641.
For the history of the star chamber see Sir Thomas Smith, Commonwealth of England (1633); Lord Bacon, History of Henry VII., edited by J. R. Lumby (Cambridge, 1881); William Hudson, "Treatise of the Court of the Star Chamber," in vol. ii. of Collectanea Juridica; H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England (1876); W. S. Holdsworth, History of English Law (fol. 1902); G. W. Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents 1559-1625 (1894); W. Busch, England under the Tudors (1895); S. R. Gardiner, History of England 1603-1642 (1883-84); D. J. Medley, English Constitutional History (1907); and A. V. Dicey, The Privy Council.

Excerpted from THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, ELEVENTH ED. (1911), Vol IX, p. 520, ENGLISH HISTORY:

The machinery employed by the first of the Tudors for the suppression of domestic disorder is well known. The most important item added by him to the administrative machinery of the realm was the famous Star Chamber, which was licensed by the parliament of 1487. It consisted of a small committee of ministers, privy councilors and judges, which sat to deal with offences that seemed to lie outside the scope of the common law,... The need for a strong central court directly inspired by the king, which could administer justice without respect of persons, was so great, that the constitutional danger of establishing an autocratic judicial committee, untrammelled by the ordinary rules of law, escaped notice at the time. It was not until much later that the nation came to look upon the Star Chamber as the special engine of royal tyranny and to loathe its name. ...

Excerpted from THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, ELEVENTH ED. (1911), Vol XXII, p. 961, RECORD:

COURT OF STAR CHAMBER--The relation between the king's council sitting as a judicial body and the Court of Star Chamber set up by the act of 3 Henry VII., c. I, is matter of controversy. The records of this court are nearly all of later date than this act. They consist of Bills, Answers, Depositions and similar documents, with a very few Decrees and Orders. The Record Office has published a descriptive list (No. XIII.) of a portion of these records; for specimens see Selden Society, Select Cases in the Star Chamber, 1477-1509, edited by I. S. Leadam.