Royalty. His Chief Justice, Montague, when a young man, just sent to the House of Com mons, was ambitious of playing a Roman part for his début; and denounced, in a florid harangue, Wolsey's coming down to that House, to hurry on a very slow moneybill. But next day he was sent for by the King who thus addressed him : " Ho! will they not let my bill pass?" The young patriot, in a great fright, went on his knees, when the jovial Henry, laying his hand on his head, went on : " Get my bill passed bytwelve o'clock to-morrow, or else by two o'clock to-morrow this head of yours shall be off!" Montague was immediately cured of his public spirit, and became a steady, court ier the rest of his days. The most remarkable Chief Justice in Queen Elizabeth's time was Popham. He was stolen by gypsies in his infancy, and his life in early. youth was wild, reckless and profligate. While a law student in the Middle Temple, he was in the habit of rob bing travellers on Shooter's Hill—at that time rather a gentlemanly employment. His wife, however, reclaimed him, and he be came a hard student. After Popham—who died immensely rich —came Chief Justice Fleming, of whom James I. used to say (and it is sufficient here to say), that he was a Judge after his own heart; and then came " the greatest oracle of English municipal jurisprudence," Sir Ed ward Coke. His father was a lawyer, and the son (born 1551) resolved to study law too, make money and be a Judge. He was a miracle of perseverance and industry. He seemed to live on his " law " as Boniface lived on his ale : he ate it, and drank it, and slept upon it, allowing himself none of the amuse ments natural to those of his age. Neither then, nor at any other time, did he ever read a play, see a play acted, or sit in company with an actor; and yet, like Blackstone, he could write verses for his children. The re sult of this severe industry was, that he eclipsed all his competitors, and, as Lord
Campbell says, " rose in his profession as rapidly as Lord Erskine did two hundred years later." He married an heiress who brought him .£30,000, and lived happily with her above a dozen years. He was all his life a mere lawyer. Neither philosophy nor poetry had any place in his hard practical mind. He had a dry pedantry of speech, which it is now amusing to read. Being chosen Speaker in the Commons, he began his first speech to the Queen thus : "As in the heavens a star is but opaciim corpus, un til it hath received light from the sun, so stand I, corpus ofacnm, a mute body, until your highness's bright shining wisdom hath looked on me and allowed me." This he doubtless considered particularly choice and happy. On the accession of King James, Coke was knighted, and retained as Attorney General. At the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, his behavior was violent in the extreme, and showed that Judge Jeffreys did not monopo lise judicial coarseness and injustice. The only redeeming feature in his insolence was its universality; he flattered no man, high or low. In 1606 he was created Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In this office he steadily set his face against the despotic at tempts of the crown, which, having destroyed the power of the barons, was now destined to yield in turn to the better-rooted power of the Commons. James wished to submit civil as well as ecclesiastical cases to the High Commission. Coke opposed it. The King made him a member of the Commis sion, but he would not sit. The Archbishop of Canterbury then advised the King to sit in it himself, but Coke told him that by the law of England, the King cannot, in his own person, adjudge any case at all. His ma jesty got into a rage,- to think that he should be under the law! But Coke quoted Braeton against him, and completed his discom fiture with law Latin. The King, on an other occasion, required him to stop a trial which he was hearing, and adjourn the court,
