COKE, SIR EDWARD, Lord Chief Justice of England, and one of the most distinguished lawyers whom his country has produced, was born of a good family, at his father's scat at Mileham in the county of Norfolk, in the year 1550.
A liberal course of education, according to the forms of discipline established at that period, contributed to bring to maturity those great talents, which were after wards exerted, with so much benefit to his country, in the affairs of public life. At the age of ten, he was placed at the free-school at Norwich, whence he repair: cd to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained about four years. I le then removed to Clifford's Inn, and, in the following year, was entered a student of the Inner Temple.
While in this situation, he already began to exhibit extraordinary proofs of his proficiency in the study of legal science, and of those acute powers of mind, for which at a more mature age, he became so highly dis tinguished. These proofs of application and ability did not pass without observation and reward; for at six years standing, he was called to the bar; which was reckoned unusually early in those strict times. The first cause in which he appeared, in the court of Queen's Bench, was a remarkable action upon the statute de scandalis magna ruin, in Trinity term 1578, which seems to have excited considerable interest, and of which he himself has given a judicious report. (See Rep. P. iv. fol. 12. b. 14. b.) About the same period, he was appointed reader of Lyon's Inn; which situation he continued to fill during three years ; and, by means of his lectures, which were much resorted to, he increased his reputation and his practice.
From this period he rose very rapidly in his profes sion ; was chosen recorder of the cities of Coventry and Norwich; appeared in all the great causes which were tried in \Vestminster Hall ; and was elected knight of the shire by the freeholders of Norfolk. He filled, suc cessively, the offices of solicitor and attorney general to the queen; and in the parliament held in the 35th year of Elizabeth, he had the honour of being chosen speak er. Towards the latter end of the reign of that prin
cess, such was the degree of eminence to which he had attained, that he was constantly consulted by her majes ty's ministers upon every matter of difficulty ; and such was the estimation in which his talents and integrity were generally held, that, with his sanction, many measures, which might otherwise have appeared unusual and arbi trary, were rendered agreeable to the feelings of the people.
As attorney-general, he took a very active part in the conduct of the various and important state trials, which occurred in that and the succeeding reign. In the pro ceedings against the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the gun-powder traitors, he displayed uncommon vi gilance, sagacity, legal knowledge, and oratorical pow ers; although in some of these, particularly during the trial of the unfortunate Raleigh, the lustre of his great talents was, in some measure, obscured by h i Iris ntemper ate behaviour and insulting language towards the accu sed, for which it were difficult to find an In conducting the prosecutions instituted against the gun powder conspirators, he exhibited an extraordinary de gree of industry and acuteness; and with great ingenui ty developed the origin, progress, and objects of that singular and nearly successful plot. His address to the jury in the trial of Garnet, one of the conspirators, was much admired at the time, and is still by many esteemed the masterpiece of this celebrated lawyer.
Although he enjoyed the highest reputation for learning and ability, Mr Coke does not appear to have courted admission to the presence of his sovereign, or to have solicited those honours and dignities to which his talents might have entitled him to aspire, with that avi dity and impatience which are so usual among men who enter upon the career of public life. Upon the 22d of May 1603, however, when King James entertained the principal persons of the kingdom at Greenwich, on ac count of his quiet accession to the throne of England, Mr Coke, together with the Mayor and Recorder of London, received the honour of knighthood.