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10.

A NEW AND GENERAL

BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.

COKE (SIR EDWARD), lord chief-justice of England,

and one of the most eminent lawyers this kingdom has
produced, was descended from an ancient family in Nor-
folk, and born at Mileham, in that county, 1549. His
father was Robert Coke, esq. of Mileham; his mother,
Winifred, daughter and coheiress of William Knightley,
of Margrave Knightley, in Norfolk. At ten years of age
he was sent to a free-school at Norwich; and from thence
removed to Trinity-college, in Cambridge. He remained
in the university about four years, and went from thence
to Clifford's-inn, in London; and the year after was en-
tered a student of the Inner Temple. We are told that the
first proof he gave of the quickness of his penetration, and
the solidity of his judgment, was his stating the cook's case
of the Temple, which it seems had puzzled the whole
house, so clearly and exactly, that it was taken notice of
and admired by the bench. It is not at all improbable
that this might promote his being called early to the bar,
at the end of six years, which in those strict times was
held very extraordinary. He himself has informed us that
the first cause he moved in the King's-bench, was in
Trinity-term, 1578, when he was counsel for Mr. Edward
Denny, vicar of Northingham, in Norfolk, in an action of
scandalum magnatum, brought against him by Henry lord
Cromwell. About this time he was appointed reader of
Lyon's-inn, when his learned lectures were much attended,
for three years.
His reputation increased so fast, and
with it his practice, that when he had been at the bar but
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a few years, he thought himself in a condition to pretend to a lady of one of the best families, and at the same time of the best fortune in Norfolk, Bridget, daughter and coheiress of John Preston, esq. whom he soon married, and with whom he had in all about 30,000l.

After this marriage, by which he became allied to some of the noblest houses in the kingdom, preferments flowed in upon him apace. The cities of Coventry and Norwich chose him their recorder; the county of Norfolk, one of their knights in parliament; and the house of commons, their speaker, in the thirty-fifth year of queen Elizabeth. The queen likewise appointed him solicitor-general, in 1592, and attorney-general the year following. Some time after, he lost his wife, by whom he had ten children; and in 1598 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas lord Burleigh, afterwards earl of Exeter, and relict of sir William Hatton. As this marriage was the source of many troubles to both parties, so the very celebration of it occasioned no small noise and disquiet, by an unfortunate circumstance that attended it. There had been the same year so much notice taken of irregular marriages, that archbishop Whitgift had signified to the bishops of his province to prosecute strictly all that should either offend in point of time, place, or form. Whether Coke looked upon his own or the lady's quality, and their being married with the consent of the family, as placing them above such restrictions, or whether he did not advert to them, it is certain that they were married in a private house, without either banns or license; upon which he and his new married lady, the minister who officiated, Thomas lord Burleigh, and several other persons, were prosecuted in the archbishop's court; but upon their submission by their proxies, were absolved from excommunication, and the penalties consequent upon it, because, says the record, they had offended, not out of contumacy, but through ignorance of the law in that point. The affair of greatest moment, in which, as attorney-general, he had a share in this reign, was the prosecution of the earls of Essex and Southampton, who were brought to the bar in Westminster-hall, before the lords commissioned for their trial, Feb. 19, 1600. After he had laid open the nature of the treason, and the many obligations the earl of Essex was under to the queen, he is said to have closed with these words, that, "by the just judgment of God, he of his earldom should be Ro

bert the last, that of a kingdom thought to be Robert the first."

In May 1603, he was knighted by king James; and the same year managed the trial of sir W. Raleigh, at Winchester, whither the term was adjourned, on account of the plague being at London; but he lessened himself greatly in the opinion of the world, by his treatment of that unfortunate gentleman; as he employed a coarse and scurrilous language against him hardly to be paralleled. The resentment of the public was so great upon this occasion, that as has been generally believed, Shakspeare, in his comedy of the "Twelfth Night," hints at this strange behaviour of sir Edward Coke at Raleigh's trial. He was likewise reproached with this indecent behaviour in a letter which sir Francis Bacon wrote to him after his own fall; wherein we have the following passage: "As your pleadings were wont to insult our misery, and inveigh literally against the person, so are you still careless in this point to praise and disgrace upon slight grounds, and that suddenly; so that your reproofs or commendations are for the most part neglected and contemned, when the censure of a judge, coming slow, but sure, should be a brand to the guilty, and a crown to the virtuous. You will jest at any man in public, without any respect to the person's dignity, or your own. This disgraces your gravity more than it can advance the opinion of your wit; and so do all your actions, which we see you do directly with a touch of vainglory. You make the laws too much lean to your opinion; whereby you shew yourself to be a legal tyrant, &c." January 27, 1606, at the trial of the gun-powder conspirators, and March 28 following, at the trial of the jesuit Garnet, he made two very elaborate speeches, which were soon after published in a book entitled "A true and perfect relation of the whole Proceedings against the late most barbarous traitors, Garnet, a Jesuit, and his confederates, &c." 1606, 4to. Cecil earl of Salisbury, observed in his speech upon the latter trial, "that the evidence had been so well distributed and opened by the attorney-general, that he had never heard such a mass of matter better con. tracted, nor made more intelligible to the jury." This appears to have been really true; so true, that many to this day esteem this last speech, especially, his masterpiece.

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It was probably in reward for this service, that he was appointed lord chief justice of the common-pleas the same year. The motto he gave upon his rings, when he was called to the degree of serjeant, in order to qualify him for this promotion, was, "Lex est tutissima cassis;" that is, "The law is the safest helmet." Oct. 25, 1613, he was made lord chief justice of the king's-bench; and in Nov. was sworn of his majesty's privy-council. In 1615 the king deliberating upon the choice of a lord-chancellor, when that post should become vacant, by the death or resignation of Egerton lord Ellesmere, sir Francis Bacon wrote to his majesty a letter upon that subject, wherein he has the following passage, relating to the lord chiefjustice: "If you take my lord Coke, this will follow: First, your majesty shall put an over-ruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme. Next, you shall blunt his industries in matter of finances, which seemeth to aim at another place. And lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your majesty's saddle." The disputes and animosities between these two great men are well known. They seem to have been personal; and they lasted to the end of their lives. Coke was jealous of Bacon's reputation in many parts of knowledge; by whom, again, he was envied for the high reputation he had acquired in one; each aiming to be admired particularly in that in which the other excelled. Coke was the greatest lawyer of his time, but could be nothing more. If Bacon was not so, we can ascribe it only to his aiming at a more exalted character; not being able, or at least not willing, to confine the universality of his genius within one inferior province of learning.

Sir Thomas Overbury's murder in the Tower now broke out, at the distance of two years after; for Overbury died Sept. 16, 1613, and the judicial proceedings against his murderers did not commence till Sept. 1615. In this affair sir Edward acted with great vigour, and, as some think, in a manner highly to be commended; yet his enemies, who were numerous, and had formed a design to humble his pride and insolence, took occasion, from certain circumstances, to misrepresent him both to the king and people. Many circumstances concurred at this time to hasten his fall. He was led to oppose the king in a dispute relating to his power of granting commendams, and James did not choose to have his prerogative disputed,