COKE, EDWARD, was born at Mileham, in the county of Norfolk, on the 1st of February, 1551-52. He was the only son of Robert Coke of Mileham, and Winifred, daughter and one of the heirs of William Knightley, of Morgrave-Knightley, in the same county. His father, who was a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, died in the year 1561, when Edward Coke was ten years old. Before that event he had been sent to the free grammar-school at Norwich, whence in September 1567 be removed to Cambridge, and was admitted as a fellow commoner at Trinity College. After having spent three years at the university, he went to London to commence his legal education. According to the practice of that time, he took the first step of his legal course by becoming a member of Clifford's Inv, a house of Chancery, or inferior ion, dependent upon the Inner Temple, and was admitted into the latter society April 24, 1572. On the 20th of April 1578 he was called to the bar. During the continuance of his studies in the Inner Temple be is said to have greatly distinguished himself in the exercises called Mootinge and Readings, which constituted a necessary part of the education of an advocate in former times, and which excited a great degree of interest and emulation among the members of the societies called Inns of Court and Chancery.
In the course of the year after his call to the bar, the society of the Inner Temple appointed him reader at Lyon's Inn ; and the intelli gence and learning displayed by him in the conduct of the exercises at which he presided in this capacity raised for him a high reputation as a lawyer, and opened the way to that extensive practice at the bar which he acquired with a degree of rapidity almost without a parallel in the history of the profession. Lloyd, in his ' State Worthies,' says that " his learned lecture so spread forth his fame that crowds of clients sued to him for his counsel." In the next term after he was called to the bar he argued a case of much nicety and importance, known to lawyers by the name of Lord Cromwell's Case, which he says, in his own report of it (4 Rep.146), " was the first cause that he moved
in the King's Bench." About three years afterwards he was associated with Popham, the solicitor-general, in arguing before the chancellor and the twelve judges in the case of Edward Shelley, where the important rule in the law of real property, which has since become celebrated as the 'Rule in Shelley's Case,' was laid down ao distinctly that it has taken its name froii this case, though ' the rule itself is of much higher antiquity. From that period until he became solicitor general his practice was enormous : it appears from the reports of that time that there was scarcely a single motion or argument before the court of King's Bench in which he was not engaged. Professional honours were the consequence of this large business in the courts: in 1586 he was chosen recorder of Norwich, and for years afterwards was called to the bench of the Inner Temple. In January 1591-92 the corporation of London having with much difficulty and at the expense of an annuity of 100/. procured the resignation of Seijeant Fleetwood, unanimously elected Coke their recorder ; but he resigned that office in June 1592, on being appointed solicitor-general. In the same summer he became reader of the Inner Temple, and had delivered several readings on the Statute of Uses to a large audience, consisting of not less than 160 members of the society, when the appearance of the plague compelled him to leave London abruptly for his house at Huntingfield in Suffolk. Such was the honour and respect in which he was held by the profession, that on this occasion, as he records in his Notes,' he was accompanied on his journey as far as Romford by a procession composed of nine benchers and forty other members of the Inner Temple. In March 1594 he was appointed attorney-general, and as the office of solicitor-general continued vacant until the close of the following year, the duties and labours of both offices during that interval devolved upon him.