Lansdowne MS 622

folio.

A Treatise on the Court of Star-chamber, written by William Hudson of Greys Inn, Esq. and containing very full and elaborate account of that tribunal. The following remarks on it by Mr. Umfreville, to whom this MS. belonged, are, with one exception, too valuable to be omitted in this place. "This treatise or survey (v. fo. 230) of the Court of Starchamber will, upon reading, appear to be wrote in a masterly yet humble manner, and by impartial readers to be approv'd. It was begun in the reign of K. Ja. 1^st, and finished early in the reign of Ch. 1^st, for the purpose of composing the general clamor in those times rais'd against that Court, for exceeding its proper bounds and jurisdiction. The author's design is to shew its just jurisdiction, to which he wishes to restore it, and which he verifys by the antient orders and just practise of the Court. He greatly exclaims against innovations and innovators, among whom (in many places of the work he reckons Sr Edw. Coke during the time of his potency, and when he was Attorney-G., and upon whom he boldly lays these early innovations, which from his example afterwards increas'd and swell'd so greatly to the prejudice of public liberty and property. Upon the whole, from the author's modest manner of conducting the arguments, and his wishes to remove innovations and observe the antient orders, it may be concluded that the Court rather wanted reforming than dissolving, as it afterwards was by the stat. 16 Car. 1. cap. 10. § 3. E. Umfreville." It appears from the work itself that Hudson was a barrister, and a practitioner in the Court of Starchamber. Some further account of him may be seen in a note by Humphrey Wanley, which follows the above by Mr. Umfreville, and also in the Harl. Catal. of MSS. N^o 1226. There is another unpublished treatise on the antiquity of this Court, by G. William Mills, 1590, of which Mr. Oldys had a MS. copy. See likewise Mr. Tate's work in vol. ii. of Hearne's Antiquarian Discourses.