LIFE OF LORD CHIEF CHAPTER VII. JUSTICE SIR EDWARD COKE, FROM HIS BIRTH TILL HE WAS MADE CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS. We now come to him who was pronounced by his contemporaries, and is still considered, the greatest oracle of our municipal jurisprudence, who afforded a bright example of judicial independence,—and to whom we are indebted for one of the main pillars of our free constitution. Unfortunately, his mind was never opened to the contemplations of philosophy; he had no genuine taste for elegant literature; and his disposition was selfish, overbearing, and arrogant. From his odious defects, justice has hardly been done to his merits. Shocked by his narrow-minded reasoning, disgusted by his utter contempt for method and for style in his compositions, and sympathising with the individuals whom he insulted, we are apt to forget that "without Sir Edward Coke the law by this time had been like a ship without ballast ;"* that when all the other Judges basely succumbed to the mandate of a Sovereign who wished to introduce despotism under the forms of juridical procedure, he did his duty at the sacrifice of his office; and that, in spite of the blandishments, the craft, and the violence of the Court of Charles I., he framed and he carried the PETITION OF RIGHT, which contained an ample recognition of the liberties of Englishmen—which bore living witness against the lawless tyranny of the approaching government without parliaments-which was appealed to with such success when parliaments were resumed, and which, at the Revolution in 1688, was made the basis of the happy settlement then permanently established. It shall be my object in this memoir fairly to delineate his career and to estimate his character. Words of Lord Bacon. CHAP. Merits of Sir Ed ward Coke. СНАР. His family. His birth. SIR EDWARD COKE, like most of my Chief Justices, was of a good family and respectable connections. The early Chancellors, being taken from the Church, were not unfrequently of low origin; but to start in the profession of the law required a long and expensive education, which only the higher gentry could afford for their sons. The Cokes had been settled for many generations in the county of Norfolk. As the name does not correspond very aptly with the notion of their having come over with the Conqueror, it has been derived from the British word "Cock," or "Coke," a CHIEF; but, like "Butler," "Taylor," and other names now ennobled, it much more probably took its origin from the occupation of the founder of the race at the period when surnames were first adopted in England. Even in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., Sir Edward's name was frequently spelt Cook. Lady Hatton, his second wife, who would not assume it, adopted this spelling in writing to him, and according to this spelling it has invariably been pronounced.* Camden has traced the pedigree of the family to William Coke of Doddington, in Norfolk, in the reign of King John. They had risen to considerable distinction under Edward III., when Sir Thomas Coke was made Seneschal of Gascoigne. From him, in the right male line, was descended Robert Coke, the father of Sir Edward. This representative of the family, although possessed of good patrimonial property, was bred to the law in Lincoln's Inn, and practised at the bar till his death, having reached the dignity of a bencher. He married Winifred Knightley, daughter and co-heiress of William Knightley, of Margrave Knightley, in Norfolk. With her he had an estate at Mileham, in the same county, on which he constantly resided, unless in term time and during the circuits. Here, on the 1st of February, 1551-2, was born Edward, their only son. He came into the world unexpectedly, at the parlour fire-side, before his mother could be carried up to her bed; and, from the extraordinary energy which he then displayed, *It is amusing to observe the efforts made to disguise the names of trades in proper names, by changing i into y, by adding a final e, and by doubling con. sonants. high expectations were entertained of his future greatness.* This infantine exploit he was fond of narrating in his old age. CHAP. VII. His mother taught him to read, and he ascribed to her tuition the habit of steady application which stuck to him through life. In his tenth year he was sent to the free grammar school at Norwich. He had been here but a short At school. time when he had the misfortune to lose his father, who died in Lincoln's Inn, and was buried in the church of St. Andrew, Holborn.† His mother married again; but his education was most successfully continued by Mr. Walter Hawe, the head master of his school, under whom he continued seven years, and made considerable proficiency in classical learning. He was more remarkable, however, for memory than imagination, and he had as much delight in cramming the rules of prosody in doggrel verse as in perusing the finest passages of Virgil. On At the University. He had reached his sixteenth year before he went to the A.D. 1567. University—a late age, according to the custom of that time; but he afterwards considered it a great advantage that he never "preproperously" entered on study or business. the 25th of October, 1567, he was admitted a pensioner of Trinity College, Cambridge. We learn nothing from himself or others of the course of study which he pursued. Whitgift, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, is said to have been his tutor, and he was no doubt well drilled in the dialectics of Aristotle; but he never displays the slightest tincture of science, and, unlike Bacon, who came to the same college a few years after him, and, while still a boy, meditated the reformation of philosophy, he seems never to have carried his thoughts beyond existing institutions or modes of thinking, and to have laboured only to comprehend and to remember what he was taught. He had a much better opinion than Bacon of “Prædicabat miri quidpiam ejus Genitura; Matrem ita subito juxta focum intercipiens et in thalamum cui suberat non moveretur. Locum ipsum ipse mihimet demonstravit."— Spelm. Icenia sive Norfolciæ, p. 150. Sir Edward, when Attorney General, caused a monument to be erected there to his memory, with an inscription beginning thus: "Monumentum Roberti Coke de Mileham, in Comitatu Norfolciæ Armig. Illustriss. Hospitii Lincolniensis quondam socii Primarii: Qui ex Winefridâ uxore sua, Gul. Knightley filiâ, hos suscepit liberos: Edwardum Coke, filium, Majestatis Regiæ Attornatum General. &c. "Obiit in Hospitio prædicto 15 die Nov. A. D. 1561., Eliz. 4. Etat. suæ 48." VOL. I. R CHAP. A.D. 1571. A student of law. the academical discipline which then prevailed, and in after life he always spoke with gratitude and reverence of his ALMA MATER. Yet he left Cambridge without taking a degree. It might have been expected that he would now have resided in his country mansion,- amusing himself with hunting, hawking, and acting as a Justice of the Peace. But the family estates were charged with his mother's jointure and portions for his seven sisters; and, as he was early imbued with ambition and a grasping love of riches, he resolved to follow the profession of the law, in which his father was prospering when prematurely cut off. He therefore transferred himself to London, -not, like other young men of: fortune, to finish his education at an Inn of Court, frequenting fencing-schools and theatres, — but with the dogged determination to obtain practice as a barrister, that he might add to his paternal acres, and rise to be a great judge. He began his legal studies at Clifford's Inn, an "Inn of Chancery," where, for a year, he was initiated in the doctrine A.D. 1572. of writs and procedure; and on the 24th of April, 1572, he was entered a student of the Inner Temple, where he was to become familiar with the profoundest mysteries of jurisprudence. He now steadily persevered in a laborious course, of which, in our degenerate age, we can scarcely form a conception. Every morning he rose at three,—in the winter season lighting his own fire. He read Bracton, Littleton, the Year Books, and the folio Abridgments of the Law, till the courts met at eight. He then went by water to Westminster, and heard cases argued till twelve, when pleas ceased for dinner. After a short repast in the Inner Temple Hall, he attended "readings" or lectures in the afternoon, and then resumed his private studies till five, or supper-time. This meal being ended, the moots took place, when difficult questions of law were proposed and discussed, if the weather was fine, in the garden by the river side; if it rained, in the covered walks near the Temple Church. Finally, he shut himself up in his chamber, and worked at his commonplace book, in which he inserted, under the proper heads, all the legal information he had collected during the day. When nine clock struck he retired to bed, that he might have an equal portion of sleep before and after midnight. The Globe and other theatres were rising into repute, but he never would appear at any of them; nor would he indulge in such unprofitable reading as the poems of Lord Surrey or Spenser. When Shakspeare and Ben Jonson came into such fashion, that even "sad apprentices of the law" occasionally assisted in masques, and wrote prologues, he most steadily eschewed all such amusements; and it is supposed that in the whole course of his life he never saw a play acted, or read a play, or was in company with a player. . He first evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the 1 students to make a representation to the Benchers of the Inner Temple respecting the bad quality of their commons in the hall. After laboriously studying the facts and the law of the case, he clearly proved that the cook had broken his engagement, and was liable to be dismissed. This, according to the phraseology of the day, was called "the Cook's Case," and he was said "to have argued it with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment, that he gave entire satisfaction to the students, and was much admired by the Bench." * At this time the rules of the Inns of Court required that a student should have been seven years on the books of his society before he could be called to the bart, but our hero's proficiency in his legal studies was so wonderful, that the Benchers of the Inner Temple resolved to make an exception in his favour, and on the 20th of April, 1578, called him to the bar when he was only of six years' standing. CHAP. VII. A.D. 1578. called to He is the bar. His progress in his profession was almost as rapid as that of Erskine, 200 years afterwards; but, instead of being the result of popular eloquence, it arose from a display of deep skill in the art of special pleading. He himself has reported His first with much glee the case in which he held his first brief. Lord Cronwell, son of the famous Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the grand ecclesiastical reformer, had become leader of the See Lloyd's Worthies, ii. 189. Formerly the period had been eight years: Dug. Or. Jur. 159. Now (I think not wisely) it is reduced to three. brief. A. D. 1579. |