Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/140

120 COKE the first with the intensest application; he slept only six hours, and from three in the morning till nine at night he read or took notes of the cases tried in Westminster Hall with as little interruption as possible. In 1578 he was called to the bar, and in the next year he was chosen reader at Lyon s Inn. His extensive and exact legal erudition, and the skill with which he argued the intricate cases of Lord Cromwell and Edward Shelley, soon brought him a practice never before equalled, and caused him to be universally recognized as the greatest lawyer of his day. In 1586 he was made recorder of Norwich, and in 1592 recorder of London, solicitor-general, and reader in the Inner Temple. In 1593 he was returned as member of parliament for his native county, and also chosen speaker of the House of Commons. In 1594 he was promoted to the office of attorney-general, despite the claims of Bacon, who was warmly supported by the earl of Essex. As crown lawyer his treatment of the accused was marked by more than the harshness and violence common in his time ; and the fame of the victim has caused his behaviour in the trial of Raleigh to be lastingly remembered against him. While the prisoner defended himself with the calmest dignity and self-possession, Coke burst into the bitterest invective, brutally addressing the great courtier as if he had been a servant, in the phrase, long remembered for its insolence and its utter injustice, " Thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart ! " In 1582 Coke married the daughter of John Paston, a gentleman of Suffolk, receiving with her a fortune of 30,000 ; but in six months he was left a widower. Shortly after he sought the hand of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, daughter of Thomas, second Lord Burghley, and granddaughter of the great Cecil. Bacon was again his rival, and again unsuccessfully ; the wealthy young widow became not, it is said, to his future comfort Coke s second wife. In 1606 Coke was made chief-justice of the Common Pleas, but in 1613 he was removed to the office of chief- justice of the King s Bench, which gave him less oppor tunity of interfering with the court. The change, though it brought promotion in dignity, caused a diminution of income as well as of power ; but Coke received some com pensation in being appointed a member of the Privy Council. The independence of his conduct as a judge, though not unmixed with the baser elements of prejudice and vulgar love of authority, has partly earned forgiveness for the harshness which was so prominent in his sturdy character. Full of an extreme reverence for the common law which he knew so well, he defended it alike against the Court of Chancery, the ecclesiastical courts, and -the royal prerogative. In a narrow spirit, and strongly in fluenced, no doubt, by his enmity to the chancellor, Egerton, he sought to prevent the interference of the Court of Chancery with even the unjust decisions of the other courts. In the case of an appeal from a sentence given in the King s Bench, he advised the victorious, but guilty, party to bring an action of praemunire against all those who had been concerned in the appeal, and his authority was stretched to the utmost to obtain the verdict he desired. On the other hand, Coke has the credit of hav ing repeatedly braved the anger of the king. He freely gave his opinion that the royal proclamation cannot make that an offonce which was not an offence before. An equally famous but less satisfactory instance occurred during the trial of Peacham, a divine in whose study a sermon had been found containing libellous accusa tions against the king and the Government. There was nothing to give colour to the charge of high treason with which he was charged, and the sermon had never been yreached or published ; yet Peacham was put to the torture, and Bacon was ordered to confer with the judges individually concerning the matter. Coke declared such conference to be illegal, and refused to give an opinion, except in writing, and even then he seems to have said nothing decided. But the most remarkable case of all occurred in the next year (1616). A trial was held before Coke in which one of the counsel denied the validity of a grant made by the king to the bishup of Lichfield of a benefice to be held in commendum. James, through Bacon, who was then attorney-general, commanded the chief-justice to delay judgment till he himself should discuss the question with the judges. At Coke s request Bacon sent a letter containing the same command to each of the judges, and Coke then obtained their signatures to a paper declaring that the attorney-general s instructions were illegal, and that they were bound to proceed with the case. His Majesty expressed his displeasure, and summoned them before him in the council-chamber, where he insisted on his supreme prerogative, which, he said, ought not to be discussed in ordinary argument. Upon this all the judges fell on their knees, seeking pardon for the form of their letter; but Coke ventured to declare his continued belief in the loyalty of its substance, and when asked if he would in the future delay a case at the king s order, the only reply he would vouchsafe was that he would do what became him as a judge. Soon after he was dismissed from all his offices on the following charges, the concealment, as attorney-general, of a bond belonging to the king, a charge which could not be proved, illegal interference with the Court of Chancery, and disrespect to the king in the case of commendams. He was also ordered by the council to revise his book of reports, which was said to contain many extravagant opinions (June 1616). Coke did not suffer these losses with patience. He offered his daughter Frances, then little more than a child, in marriage to Sir John Yilliers, brother of the favourite Buckingham. Her mother, supported at first by her husband s great rival and her own former suitor, Bacon, objected to the match, and placed her in conceal ment. But Coke discovered her hiding-place; and she was forced to wed che man whom she declared that of all others she abhorred. The result was the desertion of the husband and the fall of the wife. It is said, however, that after his daughter s public penance in the Savoy Church, Coke had heart enough to receive her back to the home which he had forced her to leave. Almost all that he gained by his heartless diplomacy was a seat in the council and in the Star-Chamber. In 1620 a new and more honourable career opened for him. He was elected member of parliament for Liskeard ; and henceforth he was one of the most prominent of the constitutional party. It was he who proposed a remon strance against the growth of Popery and the marriage of Prince Charles to the infanta of Spain, and who led the Commons in the decisive step of entering on the journal of the House the famous petition of the 18th December 1621, insisting on the freedom of parliamentary discussion, and the liberty of speech of every individual member. In con sequence, together with Pym and Sir Robert Philips, he was thrown into confinement ; and, when in the August of the next year he was released, he was commanded to remain in his house at Stoke-Poges during his Majesty s pleasure. Of the first and second parliaments of Charles I. Coke was again a member. From the second he was excluded by being appointed sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Ii. 1628 he was at once returned for both Buckinghamshire and Suffolk, and he took his seat for the former county. After rendering othervaluable support to the popular cause, he took a most important part in drawing up the great

Petition of Right. The last act of his public career was to