Edward Coke

“ When the Bloomsbury Rentals of His Grace the Duke of Bedford begin in 1729 they show Sir Thomas Coke, Lord Lovel, in occupation of the house. Sir Thomas Coke was a son of Edward Coke of Holkham. In 1718 he married Lady Margaret Tufton, daughter and co-heir of the 6th Earl of Thanet. In 1728 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lovel, of Minster Lovel, and in 1744 was created Viscount Coke, of Holkham, and Earl of Leicester. ”

“ In 1582 Coke married the daughter of John Paston, a gentleman of Suffolk, receiving with her a fortune of £30,000; but in six months he was left a widower. Shortly after he sought the hand of Lady Elizabeth Hatton, daughter of Thomas, second Lord Burghley, and granddaughter of the great Cecil. Bacon was again his rival, and again unsuccessfully; the wealthy young widow became—not, it is said, to his future comfort—Coke’s second wife. ”

“ Sir Robert Coke was son and heir to Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench. The Cokes had been settled for many generations in the county of Norfolk. 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. See Campbell's Lives of Chief Justices, vol. ”

“ Sir Edward Coke moved as an amendment, "That supply and grievances should be referred together to a committee of the whole House." The amendment was carried, and business forthwith commenced with an attack upon the monopolists. A report was drawn up directed against the king's prerogative, in virtue of which monopolies flourished, and Coke himself carried it to the bar of the Upper House, where Bacon, as Chancellor received him. The second effort must have been a labor of love indeed. ”

“ Cowel encountered an unrelenting enemy in Sir Edward Coke, the famous Attorney-General of James I., the commentator of Littleton. As a man, his name ought to arouse our indignation, for his licentious tongue, his fierce brutality, and his cold and tasteless genius. ”

“ On one occasion, Coke grossly insulted him in the Court of Exchequer, whereupon Bacon said: "Mr. Attorney, I respect you but I fear you not; and the less you speak of your own greatness, the more I will think of it." Coke angrily replied: "I think scorn to stand upon terms of greatness towards you, who are less than little—less than the least."
Lord Campbell says that Sir Edward Coke's arrogance to the whole Bar, and to all who [pg 11] approached him, now became almost insufferable, and that "his demeanour was particularly offensive to his rival"—Bacon. ”

“ COKE, ROGER (fl. 1696) , political writer, third son of Henry Coke of Thorington, Suffolk (fifth son of Sir Edward Coke) , by his wife Margaret, daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Lovelace of Kingsdown, Kent, was born some time after 1626. ”

“ It must at least be confessed that the king's affairs, both at home and abroad, were far worse conducted after the death of the Earl of Salisbury than before. [545]
Lord Coke's alienation from the court.—The administration found an important disadvantage, about this time, in a sort of defection of Sir Edward Coke (more usually called Lord Coke) , chief justice of the king's bench, from the side of prerogative. He was a man of strong, though narrow, intellect; confessedly the greatest master of English law that had ever appeared ”

“ In 1610 she became actually engaged to William Seymour: he promised not to marry her without the King's consent, but married her secretly a few months afterwards. The marriage was discovered, and she was committed to private custody whilst her husband was committed to the Tower. She escaped, disguised in a man's clothes, but was arrested in the Straits of Dover. She died in the Tower in 1615.
[11] Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) came of an old Norfolk family, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1578, having already acquired a reputation as a lawyer. ”

“ Coke’s papers had been seized by the King at his death in 1634, but on the 12th May, 1641, the House of Commons ordered Coke’s heir to print them, and thus his views on this point were perpetuated.
On the 13th February, 1620, Coke had committed the House to extraordinary doctrine in another relation to women. 110Among Mr. Lovell’s witnesses was a lady, Mrs. Newdigate, “the House calling to have them called in. Sir Edward Coke out of St. Barnard said, A woman ought not to speak in the congregation. ”

“ While Bacon was meditating an information against Sir Edward Coke in the Star Chamber for malversation of office, in the hope that a heavy fine might be imposed upon him, Coke also was plotting. He discovered that Bacon, who had been made Lord Keeper early in the year 1617, had had his head turned by his promotion and had become giddy on his pinnacle of greatness; or, to use Bacon's own words, that he was suffering acutely from an "unbridled stomach." Of this Coke determined to take advantage. ”

“ In 1628 a new Parliament threw the blame upon him of all the troubles and drawbacks from which the country was then suffering; and, in August, the same year, he was murdered by an assassin less than twelve months after he had succeeded in his proceedings against Lady Purbeck.
It was not until shortly after the death of Bacon that his rival, Sir Edward Coke, reached the zenith of his fame as a politician. Only a few months before the death of Buckingham, Coke framed the celebrated Petition of Rights, a document which has often been spoken of as the second Magna Charta. ”

“ In 1606 Coke was made chief justice of the common pleas, but in 1613 he was removed to the office of chief justice of the king’s bench, which gave him less opportunity of interfering with the court. The change, though it brought promotion in dignity, caused a diminution of income as well as of power; but Coke received some compensation in being appointed a member of the privy council. ”

“ Father Garnet, on his trial, was spoken of by Sir Edward Coke as having "many excellent gifts and endowments of nature: by birth a gentleman, by education a scholar, by art learned, and a good linguist." ”

“ As this is a fact in the history of that learned judge with which I am unacquainted, I shall be obliged to your correspondent to favour me with some particulars. According to Anthony Wood he died on June 10, 1607, and was buried at Wellington in Somersetshire; and Sir Edward Coke (6 Reports, p. 75.) notices the last judgment he pronounced in the previous Easter Term.
Edward Foss.
"Her face was like the milky way," &c.—Where is the subjoined quotation taken from, and what is the context? I cannot be quite certain as to its verbal accuracy. ”

“ I vow before God, and take the Almighty to witness, that I, Frances Coke, younger daughter of Sir Edward Coke, late Lord Cheife Justice of England, doe give myselfe absolutely to wife, to Henry Vere, Viscount Balboke, Earl of Oxenford, to whom I plight my fayth, and inviolate vows, to keepe myselfe till death us do part; and if ever I break off the least of these, I pray God damme me body and soule in hell fyre in the world to 173come. And in thys worlde, I humbly beseech God the earth may open and swallowe me up quicke to the terror of all fayth breakers that remayne alive. ”

“ One word more about John Coke, the "organ-player." He made himself useful to the Mayor, when there were no poor laws, in carrying out charitable objects. The Town Account Book of Lyme Regis has this entry, under the date 1553:—"John Coke found [i.e., provided with all necessaries] the poor children and the clerk." Let us hope that this was not a solitary instance of good feeling, and that worthy John Coke's example was not lost upon his brother organists of the neighbouring localities. ”

“ The Cokes, to whom Melbourne Castle and Hall belonged, are an old Derbyshire family, whose estates lay principally at Trusley, Marchington, Thurvaston, Pinxton, Egginton, and other places, The head of the family, in the forty-third year of the reign of Edward III., was Hugh Coke, son of Robert Coke. His eldest son, Thomas, married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Odingsells. ”

“ What Hals has omitted to state is that John Coke married a Godolphin, Prudence, daughter of William Godolphin, of Trewarveneth, by whom he had three sons—John, Edward, and Francis. Thomas Coke, who came to such grief, the sins of the grandfather visited on the grandchild, was Sheriff of Cornwall in the year 1651 under the Commonwealth. ”

“ Coke. The Institutes of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) , a reprint and translation of Littleton's book, with copious comment,—hence popularly known as Coke on Littleton,—are a great authority upon the law of real property.
53: 17. Tully. Marcus Tullius Cicero.
53: 29. Exactly at five. In the Queen Anne days the play began at six, or often as early as five. The Templar is going to the Drury Lane Theatre. ”

“ COKE, THOMAS, D.C.L. (1747–1814) , methodist bishop, was born at Brecon on 9 Sept. and baptised on 5 Oct. 1747 (Drew; his tombstone says, born 9 Oct.) His father, who first spelled the family name Coke, was Bartholomew, son of Edward Cooke, rector of Llanfyrnach, near Brecon. His mother was Anne (d. 17 May 1783, aged 70) , daughter of Thomas Phillips of Trosdre. Bartholomew Coke (d. 7 May 1773, aged 71) was an apothecary and medical practitioner, who made money and filled the chief municipal offices at Brecon (he was J.P. in 1768) . ”

“ In the process of distillation of the coal, we have seen that various other important substances are brought into existence. The final residue of coke, which is impregnated with the sulphur which has not been volatilised in the form of sulphurous gases, we need scarcely more than mention here. But the gas-tar and the ammoniacal liquor are two important products which demand something more than our casual attention. ”

“ The sulphurous impurities which are always present in the coal, and which are, to a certain extent, retained in coke made at the gas-works, themselves have a value, which in these utilitarian days is not long likely to escape the attention of capitalists. In coal, bands of bright shining iron pyrites are constantly seen, even in the homely scuttle, and when coal is washed, as it is in some places, the removal of the pyrites increases the value of the coal, whilst it has a value of its own. ”

“ When the king was in Scotland, and Lord Bacon, as lord-keeper, sat at the head of affairs, his lordship was on ill terms with Secretary Winwood, whom Coke easily persuaded to resume a former proposal for marrying his only daughter to the favourite's eldest brother, Sir John Villiers. Coke had formerly refused this match from the high demands of these parvenus. Coke, in prosperity, "sticking at ten thousand a year, and resolving to give only ten thousand marks, dropped some idle words, that he would not buy the king's favour too dear;" ”

“ After his recent severe experience, it seemed unlikely that Mr. Coke would soon regret life in the prairies, with its painful alternations of bitter cold and parching heat; its frequent privations, hunger, thirst, fatigue, restive mules, hard labor, and scanty rest. During a seven weeks’ passage between Fort Vancouver and the Sandwich Islands, on board the Mary Dare, a wretched little coal-tub of a brig, he and his companions actually found themselves vaunting the superior comforts of their late land-journey. ”

“ This lady’s death in 1775 was followed by that of Wenman Coke in 1776, when the latter’s son, Thomas William, born on the 6th of May 1754, succeeded to his father’s estates at Holkham and elsewhere. From 1776 to 1784, from 1790 to 1806, and again from 1807 to 1832 Coke was member of parliament for Norfolk; he was a friend and supporter of Charles James Fox and a sturdy and aggressive Whig, acting upon the maxim taught him by his father “never to trust a Tory.” Coke’s chief interests, however, were in the country, and his fame is that of an agriculturist. ”

“ They did not often have such a treat: Lady Coke, sweet and loving as she always was to her great-nephews and nieces, was too old and delicate to indulge in their companionship for very long at a time. The children were on their quietest behaviour with her, but the little voices tired her unconsciously, and she would not spare herself while they were with her.
Lord Lynwood, Estelle's father, and Colonel De Bohun were brothers and nephews to Lady Coke, while Mrs. De Bohun was the niece of Sir Horace Coke, Lady Coke's husband, who had died many years ago. ”

“ It is ever the unwavering pursuit of a single aim that wins. "Non multa, sed multum"—not many things, but much, was Coke's motto.
It is the almost invisible point of a needle, the keen, slender edge of a razor or an ax, that opens the way for the bulk that follows. Without point or edge the bulk would be useless. It is the man of one line of work, the sharp-edged man, who cuts his way through obstacles and achieves brilliant success. ”

“ Coke’s son, Sir John Coke, sided with the parliament in its struggle with the king, and it is possible that in later life Coke’s own sympathies were with this party, although in his earlier years he had been a defender of absolute monarchy. Coke, who greatly disliked the papacy, is described by Clarendon as “a man of very narrow education and a narrower mind” ”