At the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, Parliament gradually became separate from the Council ; a hun dred years later a division began to take place within the Council—into the Privy or Ordinary Council, the great officers of state and certain other trusted advisers of the king, and the Great Council, which consisted of the Privy Council and the great body of the nobility, spiritual and temporal. The early records speak of the Council; about the time of Henry VI the term Privy Council is met with.
The royal authority was exercised through the Council.
Towards the end of the 16th century, a committee of practically the whole Council sitting in the Star Chamber gradually ab sorbed the judicial work of the Council, but the process was gradual and there are few data. The Star Chamber had the title of the "Lords of the Council Sitting in the Star Chamber." Every member of the Privy Council had the right to sit there.
At the beginning of the Tudor period the court of Star Chamber had begun to present the appearance of a court more or less sepa rate from the Council acting as an executive body.
The Long Parliament abolished the great er part of the judicial business of the Coun cil but only as to English bills or petitions.
Its appellate jurisdiction as to places outside the ordinary English law was retained.
The act of 1833 provided "for the better administration of justice in His Majesty's Privy Council." The Judicial Committee of the Privy Coun cil is a committee of an Executive Council. Though 'spoken of as a court, it has not a self-contained and independent judicial func tion ; its legal operation receives its final consummation and sole efficacy from the di rect official of the sovereign in coun cil.
Historically it is the oldest of the royal courts. The act of the in allowing or dismissing an appeal, according to the advice contained in the report of the Judicial Com mittee, is the direct lineal descendant of the judgment given by the king in person in the Curia Regis. See 1 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 23.
See JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL; COURT by STAR CHAMBER; Dicey, Privy Council. A collection of cases (1616 1626) called Abbreviatio Placitortint contains the earliest information of the working of the Curia Regis. See REPORTS; 2 Sel. Es says, Anglo-Amer. L. H. 209.
See Procedure in the Curia Regis, by G. B. Adams (13 Columb. L. Rev. 277).