of the age was exhausted in the attack and defence of the town. In the war of the Spanish succession, Cöhorn, now a lieutenant-general, resumed his duties with unabated vigour, and rendered material assistance to the cause of the allies by his success in directing the operations against Venloo, Buremonde, and Liege, and, in the following year, by the part which he took in the capture of Bonn. In the spring of 1704 he was seized with apoplexy, which ended in his death at the Hague on the 17th of March. Cöhorn was the author of various works on the science of military engineering, the most important of which is his "New Method of Fortification," published at Leuwarden in 1685, and afterwards frequently translated.—W. M.
COIGNET, Giles, called Giles of Antwerp. This painter was born at Antwerp in 1530, and studied under Antonio Palermo, then residing in that city. He visited Rome and Naples—painting many historical works in fresco and oil. He was admitted into the academy of Antwerp in 1561. The troubles of the time, under the prince of Parma, compelled Coignet to quit his native country, and take refuge in Holland, where he remained many years. He was successful rather in effect than in drawing—in finish, rather than accuracy. Some of his moonlight and candlelight subjects are very admirable. He finally settled at Hamburg, where he died in 1600.—W. T.
COIMBRA, Don Pedro, Duke de, surnamed Alfarrobeira, son of John I., king of Portugal, and Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was born at Lisbon in 1392. After receiving a careful education at the court of his father, he was intrusted with the command of the Portuguese fleet in the first attack upon Ceuta; and subsequently held various commands of importance in the war in Africa. He spent several years in travelling over Europe and part of Asia; and on his return to Portugal devoted himself to scientific studies, till he was called upon in 1439 to assume the regency of the kingdom during the minority of his nephew, Alphonso V. He retained the office of regent with advantage to the state till 1446; but in that year, in consequence of the intrigues of the duke of Braganza, he was deposed by a summary decree of the cortes. Instigated by the duke of Braganza, the young king declared Coimbra a rebel, and marched against him at the head of an army. Don Pedro was at length forced to give battle, which he did on the 20th of May, 1449. He was himself among the first that fell. The common Portuguese account of his travels and adventures is fictitious.—W. M.
COITIER, Volcher, an eminent Dutch anatomist, born at Groningen in 1534. He prosecuted his professional studies at some of the most celebrated universities of France and Italy, and was a pupil of Fallopius, Eustachius, and Aranzi. In 1569 he was appointed physician to the town of Nürnberg, but resigned that office to become a physician in the French army. The researches of Coitier greatly promoted the progress of anatomical science, and especially in regard to the formation and growth of the bones in the fœtus, and the muscles of the nose.—J. T.
COITIER or COICTIER, Jacques, physician to Louis XI. of France, was born in the first half of the fifteenth century. He exercised the most tyrannical influence over Louis, and extorted from his royal patient immense sums of money and donations of lands. He died about 1505.—J. T.
COKAYNE, Sir Aston, an English poet, born at Elvaston in Derbyshire in 1608, and died in 1684. He was educated at Trinity college, Cambridge, and in 1632 travelled in France and Italy. Cockayne was happy in numbering among his friends such men as Donne, Massinger, Drayton, Randolph, Habington, Suckling, Sir William Dugdale, &c.; but he suffered severely during the civil war on account of his attachment to the cause of the king. His poems and plays, which are not of great merit, were printed and reprinted in 1658, and are now sought after chiefly as curiosities.—R. M., A.
COKE, Sir Edward, successively chief-justice of the common pleas and of the king's bench, has been considered for upwards of two centuries the highest authority on the municipal law of England, Notwithstanding the rapid obliteration of almost every trace of feudal precedents from our present system of jurisprudence, the "Institutes" and the "Reports" are to this day greatly venerated by the profession for their learning and accuracy. To form a right estimate of this eminent jurist, we shall view him as a member of the bar, the bench, and the senate. Edward Coke was born in the reign of Edward VI. on the 1st of February, 1551-52; and died under Charles I. on the 3d of September, 1634. He was the only son of Robert Coke of Mileham in the county of Norfolk—a gentleman whose pedigree was traced by Camden to the reign of King John. When Edward was ten years old, his father, who was a bencher of Lincoln's inn, died in London, and was buried in the church of St. Andrew's, Holborn. After spending some years in the free grammar school at Norwich, he was admitted a pensioner of Trinity college, Cambridge, in September, 1567. Unlike Bacon, the great rival of his later years, who came to the same college a short time after him, and even then conceived the rude outline of a great creation. Coke neither indulged in philosophical speculation, nor emulated the varied accomplishments of a scholar. It was when he was admitted in 1572 to the congenial cloisters of the inner temple, that he felt morally and intellectually at home. In his law studies he was indefatigable. He went to bed at nine, and got up at three—in the winter lighting his own fire. Until the courts met at eight he read Bracton, Littleton, and the year-books. From eight till twelve he sat on the back benches in Westminster taking notes of the cases argued. After a short repast in the inner temple hall, he attended "readings" in the afternoon, and then resumed his private studies till five, or supper-time. After this he took part in the "moots" (always without notes), and before retiring for the night made up his common-place book. In consequence of his superior attainments, the usual period of study was abridged in his favour, and the benchers of the inner temple, as a mark of their high opinion of his legal knowledge, called him on the 30th of April, 1578. He was equally successful as a teacher. Two years after his call, the society of the inner temple appointed him reader to Lyon's inn. "His learned lectures so spread forth his fame that crowds of clients sued to him for counsel." The early popularity of Thomas Erskine, two hundred years from this date, is the only parallel to the rapid rise of Coke. But nothing can be more striking than the difference between these two eminent men on their first appearance as advocates. In Captain Baillie's case, Erskine delivered a bold impassioned harangue, and with his—"I will drag him to light"—struck the bar with terror, and brought confusion on the bench. In Lord Cromwell's action of scan. mag. against the Rev. Mr. Denny, the case had gone fairly against the defendant, for whom Coke was retained as counsel. When all was thought lost. Coke, with an acuteness prophetic of his future distinction, ferretted out a misrecital in the declaration of the statute, moved in arrest of judgment, and obtained it. Shortly after this, he took a prominent part in one of the most celebrated cases ever argued in a British court, and succeeded in establishing the important rule in the law of real property, well known as the rule in Shelley's case. His great merits were now recognized by the public. In 1586 he was chosen recorder of Norwich. Five years after, Sergeant Fleetwood, who had been some time recorder of London, was pensioned off at £100 a year, to make room for Edward Coke. The same year, 1592, saw him solicitor-general, reader of the inner temple, and speaker of the house of commons. His lectures at the inner temple were very popular. He had delivered five out of seven on the statute of uses, when he was driven away by the plague from a class which numbered one hundred members of the society. Of these, nine benchers and forty members paid him the honour of escorting him on his way to Suffolk as far as Romford.
Coke owed every step in his promotion to his own talent. His practice was enormous: there was scarcely a single motion or argument before the court of king's bench in which he was not engaged. But he had no influence at court. When Sir Thomas Egerton was elevated to the seals, the earl of Essex stirred heaven and earth to oppose the promotion of Coke, and to secure the office of attorney-general to his favourite, Bacon. But Burleigh, with his practical sagacity, gave preference to the ablest lawyer, and, in the year 1594, Coke became attorney-general. The rivalry which the contest excited between these eminent men, gradually passed into animosity, that exhibited itself in the alternate reverses of their fortunes in undignified acts, until it finally subsided into implacable hate. The freeholders of Norfolk, proud of their countryman, returned him as their representative in 1593, as Coke himself states, without any solicitation or canvassing on his part.
In the annals of the English bar, the scurrility and vituperation of Coke—with one exception—have no parallel. But for his great intellect, and those virtues which grow like parasites
