At this period originated the animosity between Coke and Bacon which prevailed with little intermission during the life of the latter. As soon as the office of attorney-general became vacant, upon the removal of Sir Thomas Egerton to the seals, the Earl of Essex used his most strenuous efforts to induce the queen to bestow that place upon Bacon, instead of promoting Sir Edward Coke from the inferior office of solicitor-general. The letters of Bacon to Essex and others, with relation to this intrigue, abound with sarcastic and contemptuous expressions respecting Coke, whose high reputation and great experience seemed to point him out as a fitter man for the office than his rival, whose practice at the bar was never extensive, and who was then scarcely known in the courts. The state services imposed upon the attor ney-general at the end of Elizabeth's reign were extremely laborious. The severity of the laws recently introduced against Roman Catholics had occasioned a succession of plots by foreign adventurers against the person of the queen, ties investigation of which was necessarily committed to the attorney-general The treasons of Lopez, of Patrick Cullen, of Williams and Yorke, and numerous others of inferior moment, occurred about this period ; and the business of constant examination at the Tower, added to his Star-Chamber duties and his undiminished practice in the common-law courts, must have imposed a weight of labour and responsibility upon Coke which no mind of common activity and energy could have undergone. Whole volumes of examinations in these cases, taken by himself and written with his own band, which are still preserved at the State Paper Office, sufficiently attest his zeal and assiduity in the service. In February 1593 Coke, being at that time solicitor-general, was elected without solicitation on his part, and without opposition, a member of parliament for his native county of Norfolk. At the meeting of this parliament be was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons.
In the year 1582 Coke married the daughter and heiress of John Paston, Esq., of Huntingfield in Suffolk, through whom he became connected with several families of great opulence and importance, and with whom he received a fortune of 30,000/. By this lady he had ten children. She died in June 1598. In the month of November in the same year Coke contracted a second marriage with the widow of Sir William Hatton, daughter of Thomas Lord Burleigh, and grand-daughter of the lord high treasurer, which, though an advantageous alliance in point of connection and property, was by no means a source of domestic happiness. The marriage itself involved all the parties concerned in it in considerable embarrassment; for having takeu place without licence or banns, Coke and his lady, together with tho clergyman, Lord Burleigh, and all who were present at the ceremony, were cited to appear in the Archbishop's Court; and it was only in consequence of their making a full submission, and pleading their ignorance of the law (a singular excuse in Coke's mouth), that they escaped the sentence and penalties of excommunication.
Sir Edward Coke held the office of attorney-general until the death of Queen Elizabeth; and having always been favourable to the title of James I., co-operated cordially with Cecil and the other members of the late queen's council in making the necessary ansugemente for the peaceable accession of the king of Scotland to the crown. James upon his arrival in London received him into his full confidence and favour, and continued him in his office of attorney-general.
Coke's sound judgment and extensive legal knowledge, united with his fervent attachment to Protestantism, rendered him a serviceable officer of the crown in the various proceedings against the Roman Catholics at the close of Elizabeth's reign and the beginning of that of James .I. In the examinations respecting the several assassination treasons, which have been already mentioned, as well as that of Squire in 1598, of the Raleigh conspiracy in 1603, of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, and of numerous other treasonable and seditious movements imputed to the Catholics during the period that he filled the office of attorney-general, he engaged. with a zeal and ardour far beyond mere professional excitement; and the temper displayed in his speeches and general conduct on the several trials is much more that of a religious patisan than of a legal advocate. It is common with Roman Catholio writers to attribute to him the utmost barbarity in the use of the rack and the general treatment of prisoners under examination. That he, who in his writings forcibly condemns the use of torture, was nevertheless in his official character the constaut instrument of the crown for applying this odious process, is beyond all question ; but it must be remembered that what he wrote on this subject was written long after the period of which we arc now speaking, in the dawn of a better order of things ; and that the use of the rack far discovering state garrets was common throughout Europe in his time, and had been In common practice in England for centuries before he was born. There is no satisfactory proof that he was coarse and cruel in his conduct towards prisoners under examination, and on the contrary, Father Cornelius, the Jesuit, who was repeatedly examined by Coke. said he found him "(actinium homiuuni hutneniasimus;" and Garnet, in his intercepted correspondence, and also on Ida trial, admits that be was constantly treated by him with courtesy and kindness. At the lame time, there is no doubt that as the advocate of the crown on trials for state offencee, he displayed a degree of intemperance and asperity not only shocking to the feelings of readers familiar only with the more civilised character of criminal proceedings at the present day, but strongly offensive even to contemporaries.
With the trials of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot in 1606, the career of Sir Edward Coke as an advocate closed. In the month of June in that year he received his appointments as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. lie retained the situation upwards of seveu years, and in the discharge of the common judicial duties at this period, his profound learning and unwearied indeetry procured him the highest reputation. At this time too, though he has sometimes been reproached for a haughty and unconciliating deportment on the bench, the bitters, nese of temper which he displayed at the bar appears to have been suppressed or softened ; and in several constitutional questions of the highest importance which occurred while he was chief justice of the Common Pleas, and in which he resolutely opposed the views of the king, especially in the conflicts between the ecclesiastical jurisdictions and the courts or common law, and in his resistance to the encroach. silent of prerogative on the subject of royal proclamations, he dis played great integrity and independence. With a view to subdue his uncompromising disposition, he was promoted to the chief-justiceship of the King's Bench, in October 1613, and a few days afterwards, in consequence of a special order from the king, took his seat at the board as a privy councillor. In the following year he was elected
high steward of the University of Cambridge. But the project of making the chief justice "turn obsequious" by his advancement, which was no doubt entertained by the court, and was expressly avowed by Bacon, altogether failed. In the case of Peacham, who was pr•oeecnted for treason in the year 1615, for having in his pos. session a sermon supposed to contain sedition, written by him, but never preached or published, Coke, after long hesitation to deliver what he quaintly called an "auricular opinion," seems at last to have declared that the offence was not treason. His exertions iu the prosecution of the murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury iu the same year, though praised by Bacon in conducting the case as attorney. general, gave displeasure to the king ; and his independent conduct in the came of Commendams, which occurred in 1616, finally determined the court to remove him from his office. The transaction was this a scrjeant-at-law, in the discharge of his duty as an advocate in the Court of Common flea•, was supposed to have used matter iu his argument which tended to question the royal prerogative ; upon this, the king required the judges to proceed no further in the case with out his warrant. The twelve judges conferred upon this message, and resolved that in a common dispute between party and party it was their dray to proceed notwithstanding the king's mandate. Upon this they were summoned to the council-table, and personally reprimanded by the king; and all of them, excepting the lord chief justice, acknow ledged their error, and craved pardon for their offence upon their knees. Sir Edward Coke, on the contrary, after craving pardon for any formal errors which be might have committed, boldly justified hie opinion upon the substantial point, contending that the king's command for staying the proceedings was a delay of justice, and con sequently against the law, and contrary to the judges' oath. After much discussion, the lords of the council proposed the following ques tion to the judgee:—"NVhether in a case where the king believed his prerogative or interest concerned, and required the judges to attend him for advice, they ought not to stay proceedings till his Majesty had consulted them 1" All the judges at once answered in the affirmative, except Lord Coke, who only said "that, when the case happened, he would do that which should become an honest and just iudge." The court now despaired of bending the stubborn integrity of the chief justice, and determined at all events to displace him. Accord ingly, on the 26th of June 1616, as a preliminary to his removal, he was summoned before the council, and charged with several frivolous accusations, some of them founded upon alleged malversations while he was attorney-general, to all of which he returned distinct answers. Four days afterwards he was sgsin summoned to appear before the council, upon which occasion he was reprimanded, sequestered from the conncibtable during the king's pleasure, enjoined not to ride tho summer circuit as judge of assize, and ordered to employ his leisure in revising many "extravagant and exorbitant opinions" set down in his 'Book of Reports.' In the course of the vacation ho was again summoned before the council to answer a list of twenty-eight objections to doctrines contained in his ' Reports,' which, a contemporary writer observes, "were either so weak in themselves, or so well answered, that they were readily reduced to five." (' Chamberlain's Letter to Sir D. Carleton,' 26th of October, 1016.) 112 November 1616 he received his writ of discharge from the office of chief justice, and — — was succeeded by Sir Henry Montague, who was expressly warned by the lord-chancellor Egerton " to avoid the faults of his predecessor, who had been removed for his excessive popularity." From causes not very distinctly explained in the letters and histories of the (lay, which probably were connected with an intrigue for the marriage of his daughter to Sir John Villiers, afterwards Viscount Purbeck, Sir Edward Coke, though he never afterwards filled a judicial situation, was at no long interval restored to a certain degree of royal favour. In September 1617 he was rejoetated as n member of the privy council, and iu July 1618 he was appointed a ' commissioner for the exercising the office of lord high treasurer of England,' jointly with Archbishop Abbott, Lord Chancellor Bacon, and several others. (See Devon's Pell. Records, temp. Jac. 1.) In the course of the next three years he was employed in several other commissions of a public nature, and until the year 1620 lie was constant iu his attendance at the board. in the parliament which assembled iu that year he was returned as a member for the borough of Liskoard iu Cornwall. In this parliament ho distinguished himself as one of the most able and zealous advocates of the liberal measures which were proposed. He became a strenuous opponent of the pernicious monopolies by which at that period the freedom of trade was fettered, and took an animated part in that struggle between the prerogative pretensions of James and the freedom of debate, which ended in the celebrated resolution of the Commons, "that the liberties, franchises, privileges, and juris dictions of parliament are the antient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England." During the year 1621 ho attended only three at the privy council ; and on one of those occasions, namely, on the 5th of October 1621, ho seems to have appeared only to inform the board that be had induced one Johnstone to give up a grant which lie had obtained from the king, "both a grievance to the subject, and a disservice to the state;" which informs tion he desired might be recorded in the council register. (' Council Books.') His adherence to the popular or country party gave great offence to the court, and he was accused of various offences and mal practices. The king at this period was so incensed against him that before he would grant his warrant for a general pardon at the end of 1621, be expressly commanded the privy council to consult upon the means of excepting Sir Edward Coke from the benefit of it; and on the 27th of December of that year Coke was arrested and committed to the Tower, where he remained a close prisoner until the Gth of August 1622. While lie was in the Tower proceedings were instituted against him both in the star-chamber and the court of wards, the precise nature and issue of which cannot now be ascertained. Upon his enlargement from the Tower, he was ordered to confine himself to his house at. Stoke Yogis, and not to repair to the court without express licence from the king. After his disgrace on this occasion, he was never again restored to the council-board. At the end of 1623 he was appointed a commissioner, together with Sir William Jones, one of the judges of the Common Pleas, and two other persons, to inquire into the church establishment in Ireland. That ho was on the point of going on this mission appears from the fact that a passport dated January 16th, 1623-24, was actually granted by the council. Some accident however prevented his departure.