Civil War. On 17 October 1632, the Court of Star Chamber banned all "news books" because of complaints from Spanish and Austrian diplomats that coverage of the Thirty Years' War in England was unfair. As a result, newsbooks pertaining to this matter were often printed in Amsterdam and then smuggled into the country, until control of the press collapsed with the developing ideological conflict of 1640–41. The Star Chamber became notorious for judgments favourable to the king, for example when Archbishop Laud had William Prynne branded on both cheeks through its agency in 1637 for seditious libel. In 1571 Elizabeth I set up an equivalent Court in Ireland, the Court of Castle Chamber, to deal with cases of riot and offences against public order. Although it was initially popular with private litigants, under the Stuarts it developed the same reputation for harsh and arbitrary proceedings as its parent court, and during the political confusion of the 1640s, it disappeared. In the early 1900s, Edgar Lee Masters commented: Abolition and aftermath In 1641, the Long Parliament, led by John Pym and inflamed by the severe treatment of John Lilburne, as well as that of other religious dissenters such as William Prynne, Alexander Leighton, John Bastwick and Henry Burton, abolished the Star Chamber with the Habeas Corpus Act 1640. The gruesome punishments which the Star Chamber imposed were not forgotten, and were revived by King James II, prompting an article in the Bill of Rights of 1688 "That excessive Baile ought not to be required nor excessive Fines imposed nor cruell and unusuall Punishments inflicted". The Chamber itself stood until its demolition in 1806 (or 1834 or early in 1836), when its materials were salvaged. The door was reused in the nearby Westminster School until it was destroyed in the Blitz, and the historic Star Chamber ceiling, with its bright gold stars, was brought to Leasowe Castle on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire from the Court of Westminster, along with four tapestries depicting the four seasons. Recent history In the late 20th century, the expression was revived in reference to ways of resolving internal high-level questions within the government, usually relating to budget appropriations. The press and some civil servants under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990) revived the term for private ministerial meetings at which disputes between the Treasury and high-spending departments were resolved. In 2010, the press employed the term