COKE, SIR EDWARD (1552-1634), English judge, was born at Mileham in Norfolk on Feb. 1, 1552. He was educated at Norwich Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1572 entered the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1578, and the next year was chosen reader of Lyon's Inn, a re sponsible position usually held by counsel of ten years' standing. His early cases included the Cromwell libel case (4 Rep. 13) and Shelley's Case (1 Rep. 94), and his reputation became great. In 1582 he married Bridget Paston, who brought him a fortune. In 1589 he became M.P. for Aldeburgh, and in 1592 solicitor-general, recorder of London and Speaker of the House of Commons, a post that involved difficulties with Elizabeth over the Commons' passion for discussing ecclesiastical matters.
In he first crossed Bacon's course. The attorney-general ship,fell vacant, and Bacon, supported by Essex, became his rival for the post. Coke got it, and then kept Bacon out of the solici torship as well, or so Bacon thought. Coke's wife died in 1598 and six months later he married Lady Elizabeth Hatton, Bacon again being his unsuccessful rival.
As attorney-general, Coke was busy. He started a series of State prosecutions for libel on a large scale. The theory he advo cated was that all comment on the doings of authority was unjus tified ; the remedy of those aggrieved was to be sought in the courts or in parliament. He also had the conduct of several of the great trials of the day. In i600—the year in which the first volume of his Reports appeared—he prosecuted Essex and South ampton, in 1603 Raleigh, and in 16o5 the Gunpowder Plot con spirators. (See Cobbett, State Trials, vol. ii.) In 16o6 Coke was made chief justice of the common pleas, and there began at once that series of conflicts which eventually broke his career. At the time of his appointment archbishop Ban croft had already started his attempt to shake off the control which the common law courts exercised by prohibition, and James, as ever, was ready to support any cause that looked likely to break the supremacy of the common law. This matter came to a head in 1607, when, on Bancroft renewing his protests, James took up the position that, as fountain of justice, he could remove any cases he pleased from his judges and try them himself. Coke refuted him, in spite of some precedents under the early kings that must have been difficult to get round. But the disputes with the ecclesiastical courts went on. In 1610 Coke gave his cele brated opinion before the Council that the King's proclamation cannot change the law, and in 1611, he had a brush with the court of high commission, with the result that the next year he was put on the commission himself ; Coke evaded this attempt to muzzle him by finding legal flaws in the commission's appointment. In 1613 Bacon, with an eye to his own advancement, and to get Coke into a position where he would be less troublesome, had him "promoted" to be chief justice of the king's bench, an office of higher dignity and less salary. Coke was made a privy councillor, and was the first to be called Lord Chief Justice of England, which was remembered against him afterwards. Here his pre dominance was still as great ; and he had to protest, in Peacham's Case, against the practice of consulting the judges privately, which James, abetted by Bacon, was more or less driven to fol low because when the whole Bench was consulted together the rest of the judges merely echoed Coke. In 1615, still an implaca ble and bigoted adherent of the common law, he tried his strength too high. The Court of King's Bench started a dispute with the chancery over the right of the chancellor to interfere where a common law court had given a decision, and Coke was believed to be at the bottom of the attempt to make some who had been suitors in a case of this sort liable to the penalties of a praemunire, an attempt which failed. The disputes continued, embittered by Coke's personal dislike for Egerton, the chancellor. Meanwhile Coke had further endangered his position by throwing out dark hints from the bench in his conduct of the Overbury trials ("God knows what became of that sweet babe, prince Henry, but I know somewhat") . Finally he came into collision with James once more over the king's right to allow commendams (holding of livings in plurality). The other judges submitted, but Coke merely said that he would do what an honest and just judge ought to do.
In June 1616 the privy council, with Bacon at the back of it, formulated three charges against him. One was a trumpery mat ter, never proved, about a bond that had passed through his hands when he was attorney-general. The other two were charges of interference with the court of chancery, and of disrespect to the king in the matter of commendams. He was also ordered to revise the "errors" in his reports. Bacon, then attorney general, made himself very unpopular by engaging Coke on this last issue. Coke remained impenitent, and was dismissed. Thereupon, presumably in search of a friend in high places, he offered his daughter in marriage to Sir John Villiers, brother of the duke of Buckingham. His wife, supported by Bacon, objected, and hid the child, who was then only fourteen. Coke found her and mar ried her, strongly against her will, to Villiers. She ran away from him soon afterwards. However, Coke got back into the privy council by 1617, and sat in the Star Chamber. In 162o he en tered parliament as member for Liskeard, in theory as a supporter of the King. But for the rest of his career he was a leading mem ber of the popular party. He strongly opposed the Spanish mar riage proposals, took a part in drawing up the charges against Bacon, and spoke in the Liberties of Parliament debate, spending nine months in prison as a result. But nothing was found that could incriminate him. It was his Bill of Liberties that ultimately took the form of the Petition of Right. His last appearance was at the time when he saved the awkward situation caused by the speaker's suppressing Eliot's attack on the duke of Buckingham, who was, however, not mentioned by name. The House was at a loss, and in turmoil. Coke rose, and, having named the duke first, went on to say what the House thought of him; whereupon "as when one good hound recovers the scent the rest come in with a full cry so they . . . laid the blame where they thought the fault was." At the end of the session he retired, and died at Stoke Poges on Sept. 3, 1634. His papers were instantly seized, and some, including his will, never recovered.
Barrister, judge, and reporter of the first rank, Coke is the greatest common lawyer of all time. He was inclined to be over bearing and impatient both at the bar and on the bench, he was undoubtedly rather narrow, and he was not always logical. But his knowledge of the law, in days when it was far more difficult to come by than it is now, was unequalled, and to him more than anyone we owe the reduction of the chaos of the old authorities to the comparatively orderly state of the law as he left it. As a judge he is noted for his wholehearted adherence to the Com mon Law. He upheld it against the Church, the Admiralty, the Star Chamber, and, most dangerous of all, the royal prerogative, with success. He tried to uphold it against the Chancery, but that was too strong for him. While he was issuing his Reports no others came out. They are not so much reports in the modern sense as compendia of the law bearing on a particular case, with comments on points raised or general remarks. The best esti mate of his importance as a legal authority is that of C. J. Best— "The fact is that Lord Coke had no authority for what he states, but I am afraid we should get rid of a great deal of what is con sidered law in Westminster Hall if what Lord Coke says without authority is not law. He was one of the most eminent lawyers that ever presided as a judge in any court of Justice. . . ." Among his other publications are four volumes of Institutes (1628), of which volume i. is known as Coke upon Littleton.
As a man, he evokes admiration more readily than sympathy. More learned a lawyer than Bacon but without his philosophical genius, a just judge but a savage prosecutor, obstinate in his op position to illegal exercise of authority, but quite incapable of distinguishing between the prerogative, which wanted to override the law in the interests of absolutism, and the chancery, which sought to counteract its rigidity in the cause of justice, he was capable of cringing before the king even in the act of defying the Crown.