Document 4: The answer of Nicholas Porter and others to a bill of complaint brought against them in the Star Chamber during the reign of Henry VIII.(Catalogue reference: STAC 2/14 folio 10) In this section:About this documentThis document is the answer of Nicholas Porter and others to a bill of complaint brought against them in the Star Chamber during the reign of Henry VIII. The court of the Star Chamber Star Chamber cases frequently allege public disorder, such as riots, forcible entry and assault, but many of them were in fact private disputes about rights to property. The violence would have been exaggerated in order to make the case a matter for the royal courts. Star Chamber pleadings generally consisted of the bill of complaint The bill of complaint from this case has also survived, and we therefore
know that John Ed complained that he was forcibly ejected from the manor
of Freshwater Answers normally begin with a statement claiming that the complaint was
inaccurate, followed by the defendant’s version of the truth. They generally
conclude with an overall denial of the facts in the bill of complaint,
and a plea for the case to be dismissed with expenses for the defendant's The document is written in an early 16th-century mixed hand
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