Coke, Sir Edward

Coke, Sir Edward, often, but incorrectly, styled Lord Coke, born in 1551, called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1578, counsel in Shelley's case (see that title), Speaker of the House of Commons, Solicitor-General and Attorney-General under Queen Elizabeth, knighted by James I. shortly after his accession in 1603, made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1606 and of the King's Bench in 1613, 'taking particular delight,' writes Lord Campbell in his Lives of the Chief Justices, 'in styling himself ' Chief Justice of England,''was deprived of office and committed to the Tower by Charles I., for his support of the Petition of right. Coke was bitterly hostile to the injunction of equity. The controversy between Coke and Lord Ellesmere, the Chancellor, was acute. James I. referred the whole matter to Bacon, the Attorney-General, and others learned in the law. Acting upon the recommendations of this committee of counsel, James I. decided the matter in favour of Chancery. It should be mentioned to Coke's credit that he stood up manfully against King James upon the question of the Law Officers interfering with the judges, and also that he strongly protested against 'the cursed gallows tree' so frequently in use in his day. He died in 1634. Author of the Institutes and The Reports (see those titles), and of an edition of Littleton's Treatise on Tenures. A famous text-writer and reporter among English lawyers, one of whose great characteristics, however, has been not unjustly said by Sir James Stephen in his Digest of the Criminal Law, 3rd Edn. 1883, at p. 364, to be an 'utter incapacity for anything like correct language or consecutive thoughts.' Lord Campbell, however, writes that his First Institute (being the Commentary on Littleton) 'may be studied with advantage, not only by lawyers, but by all who wish to be well acquainted with the formation of our polity and with the manners and customs prevailing in England in times gone by.'