The Court of Castle Chamber was a Irish court of special jurisdiction which operated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Dublin Castle, the seat of the Court of Castle Chamber, present day, showing the Record Tower. The original chamber which served as a courtroom no longer exists.
Lord Falkland
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, painted by Van Dyck
The Star Chamber was an English court that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster, from the late 15th century to the mid-17th century, and was composed of Privy Counsellors and common-law judges, to supplement the judicial activities of the common-law and equity courts in civil and criminal matters. It was originally established to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against socially and politically prominent people sufficiently powerful that ordinary courts might hesitate to convict them of their crimes. It was mainly a court of appeal and could impose any penalty, except the death penalty, in its own right. At various times it had sub-courts for particular areas, notably for appeals of 'poor man's causes'.
Starry vault of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy, frescoed by Giotto, a common ceiling motif of the period throughout Europe
A document of 1504 showing King Henry VII sitting in the Star Chamber and receiving William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, and clerics associated with Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, as well as the Mayor of London
Engraving of the Star Chamber, published in "Old and new London" in 1873, taken from a drawing made in 1836