COKE, SIR EDWARD

Sir Edward Coke

An influential figure of Renaissance England and a great jurist, Sir Edward Coke bravely fought for the supremacy of the COMMON LAW over the monarchy. He served in numerous high public offices under Elizabeth I, who reigned from 1558 to 1603, James I, who reigned from 1603 to 1625, and Charles I, who reigned from 1625 to 1649—and his continual efforts to restrain the last two rulers remain a significant part of his legacy. He was frequently a member of Parliament (M.P.), and in the 1620s, he became a leading figure of that body, staunchly advocating the rights and freedoms of Parliament against challenges from James I and Charles I.

Coke was a contemporary of such great figures
of Elizabethan England as William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and FRANCIS BACON. He is most wellknown for his influential legal writings, particularly his four-volume Institutes of the Laws of England. He also published, during his career, Reports, a compendium of leading cases of common law with his own analyses that finally constituted thirteen volumes. Coke’s ideas formed part of the intellectual background for the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. His writings on English common law, along with those of SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, greatly influenced U.S. law and were considered required reading for U.S. lawyers until well into the nineteenth century.

Coke was born February 1, 1552, at Mileham,
Norfolk, England, into a family of Norfolk
gentry, the only son among eight children. His
father was a barrister, or trial lawyer, and Coke
took up the same profession. In 1572, after being
educated at Norwich Grammar School; at Trinity
College, Cambridge; and at Clifford’s Inn,
London, he was admitted to the Inner Temple—
one of the inns of court that served as colleges
in the university of law.He became a barrister in
1578, and quickly rose to great prominence in
his profession and in the political sphere of his
time. He was aided in his rise by his friendship
with William Cecil, Baron Burghley, the chief
minister to Queen Elizabeth I. Coke became
recorder of Coventry in 1585 and of Norwich in
1586, M.P. for Aldeburgh in 1589, recorder of
London and SOLICITOR GENERAL in 1592, and
M.P. for Norfolk and Speaker of the Commons
in 1593.
In 1582, Coke married Bridget Paston. The
union brought him a considerable fortune in
money and land, as well as seven children.With
his later political power, he was able to add
greatly to his wealth over the course of his life.
His first wife died in 1598. His subsequent
marriage a few months later to Lady Elizabeth
Hatton, twenty-six years his junior and granddaughter
of Burghley, was a troubled one and
ended in separation. He had one daughter by
Lady Hatton.
In 1594, Coke became attorney general for
the Crown, or “the quenes atturney,” as a contemporary
put it, winning the post in competition
against Bacon, a noted philosopher and
politician and Coke’s chief rival during his public
career. As attorney general, Coke was responsible
for defending the interests and royal
prerogative, or power, first of Queen Elizabeth
and then of King James. He supervised state
prosecutions in several major TREASON trials,
including those of the earls of Essex and
Southampton (1600–01); Raleigh (1603); and
the conspirators involved in the Gunpowder
Plot (1605), an attempt by Catholic opponents
to blow up the House of Lords. A gifted speaker,
Coke also proved in such trials that he could be
brutal in court. He said of Raleigh, a former
favorite of Queen Elizabeth and hero of the
realm, “[T]hou hast a Spanish heart, and thyself
art a spider of hell” and “there never lived a viler
viper upon the face of the earth than thou.”
Coke was so powerful at this point in his career
that in 1601 he was able to invite the queen to
his estate at Stoke Poges, where he presented her
with jewels and other gifts valued at over £1,000.
Coke’s responsibilities as “the queen’s attorney”
were diametrically opposed to those in his
later role as champion of the common law
against the Crown. In 1606, he was made chief
justice of the Court of Common Pleas, a position
as judge of the common law that soon put
him at odds with King James. Through this position,
Coke sought to limit thejurisdiction of the
royal courts—particularly the ecclesiastical, or
church, courts and the Chancery, or courts of
the king’s lord chancellor—by maintaining that
the king was bound by the tradition of common
law in making decisions. Coke told King James
that he could not make judicial decisions that
were in conflict with common-law precedent.
He argued that the common law was a system of
“artificial reason and judgment,” the accumulated
wisdom of many decisions over hundreds
of years that could only be acquired through
laborious study. The common law was therefore
not amenable to ARBITRARY change by one individual,
even if that individual was the king. In
Fuller’s case (1607–8), for example, Coke argued
that “the king in his own person cannot adjudge
any case.” He also delivered an opinion in 1610 in which he stated that the king cannot change
any part of the common law or create through
royal proclamation a new offense under the law.
Coke’s concept of the common law’s authority
over the monarchy eventually became part of
the English constitution.
In 1613, Coke was made chief justice of the
King’s Bench, moving to a lower-paying position
that Bacon and other enemies inflicted on him
as punishment and with the hope that it would
force Coke to give in to the demands of the
Crown. However, shortly thereafter, Coke was
appointed to the PRIVY COUNCIL, the king’s formal
body of advisers. Again, he stubbornly
asserted the superiority of the common law over
the powers of the king and the king’s advisers.
He clashed with the Court of King’s Bench and
with the king in several more prominent cases—
including the king’s attempts to hold several
ecclesiastical benefices, or offices, at the same
time—and in 1616, James dismissed Coke from
office. Ever resilient—and ever valuable to the
state because of his great legal skills and knowledge—
by 1617, he was back in the Privy Council
and the STAR CHAMBER, a court of law made
up largely of members of the Privy Council.
In 1620, Coke again entered Parliament, this
time as a member from a Cornwall borough.
While in Parliament in this last stage of his public
career, Coke became a leading advocate for
that body’s independent power against the king.
He participated in the IMPEACHMENT of Bacon
as lord chancellor and helped draft the Protestation
of December 1621, which stated that “the
liberties, franchises, privileges and jurisdictions
of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted
birthright and inheritance of the subjects of
England” and that Parliament “hath and of right
ought to have freedom of speech” in England.
This document caused James to dissolve that
session of Parliament and dismiss its leaders.
Coke, at age seventy, received the most severe
sentence of anyone in Parliament and was put in
the Tower of London for nine months.
Coke soon became an M.P. again, sitting for
Coventry in the Parliament of 1624. James I died
in 1625, the same year that Coke sat in Parliament
for Norfolk, and the throne was taken by
Charles I. In 1628, Coke spent his last term in
Parliament, for Buckinghamshire. That year, he
led the movement to put forward the Petition of
Right, which guaranteed the subjects’ rights with
respect to the monarchy, including protection
against arbitrary imprisonment, freedom from
taxation without parliamentary representation,
and DUE PROCESS OF LAW. In his defiant reply to
the petition, King Charles was adamant about
what he called his “sovereign power” to rule the
country. Later, in an eloquent speech before Parliament,
Coke questioned the king’s phrase,
reminding the members of the importance of
MAGNA CHARTA, the medieval document that
protected the nobility, Parliament, and, to a certain
degree, the common people from arbitrary
royal decrees. “Take we heed what we yield
unto,”Coke declared. “Magna Carta is such a fellow
that he will have no sovereign.”
Coke retired from public life shortly after
this speech. Despite his efforts, ideas such as
those contained in the Petition of Right were not
embodied in formal law until much later in English
history. Sadly, Coke suffered the indignities
of royal prerogative once again, in July 1634, several
months before his death, when his papers
were ransacked and stolen by royal officials.
Though Coke was very old and infirm, the king
still deemed him “too great an oracle among the
people ” and therefore dangerous to the power of
the monarchy. Coke died in his house at Stoke
Poges in September 1634.
Coke’s legal writings served as invaluable
guides to jurists for centuries after his death.
His Reports (1600–1611, 1650–59), covering a
period of 40 years, were the preeminent legal
texts of their time. These 13 volumes were based
on careful notes on cases he had heard since he
had been nominated to the bar. Arranged by
subject, they went into greater detail than had
previous law reports, including coverage of earlier
precedents affecting contemporary judicial
decisions. They are different from modern legal
reports in that they reflect Coke’s own interpretations
of the law, with each report forming a
brief treatise on the relevant points of law. They
also contain numerous factual errors and misinterpretations
of legal precedent.
Coke’s four-volume Institutes of the Laws of
England (1628–64) was the first significant legal
work to be written partly in English. The first volume,
called Coke upon Littleton (1628), contains
the text of Sir Thomas Littleton’s 1481 treatise
on property, On Tenures, with an English translation
and commentary by Coke. The second
volume (1642) deals with statutes of Parliament,
the third (1664) with CRIMINAL LAW, and the
fourth (1644) with the jurisdiction and history
of different English courts. Though the Institutes
reflect many of Coke’s own shortcomings—they
have been criticized for their disorganization,
inaccuracies, and idiosyncrasies—they nevertheless
put into modern language and make accessible
a body of law that would have otherwise
remained obscure and difficult to gather.
Coke’s ideas later influenced the American
Revolution, particularly through the voice of
JAMES OTIS JR., a lawyer in Massachusetts. In
arguing the WRITS OF ASSISTANCE CASE in 1761,
Otis used Coke’s writings to support his contention
that an unwritten English constitution
had been developed by precedent over the years,
and that any act of Parliament deemed to be in
violation of that constitution could be declared
void by the judiciary. The relevant passage in
Coke is taken from Dr. Bonham’s case (1610):
It appears in our books that in many cases the
common law will control acts of Parliament,
and sometimes adjudge them to be utterly
void: for when an act of Parliament is against
common right or reason, or repugnant, or
impossible to be performed, the common law
will control it, and adjudge such act to be
void.
Leaders of the American Revolution, including
JOHN ADAMS, used such ideas in the eighteenth
century to lobby for power to void
PARLIAMENTARY LAWS that were considered to
be harmful. Such ideas also influenced the
development of the U.S. Constitution and the
power of JUDICIAL REVIEW, which allows the
judiciary to strike down legislation that violates
the Constitution.

FURTHER READINGS
Bowen, Catherine D. 1957. The Lion and the Throne: The Life
and Times of Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634). Boston: Little,
Brown.
Boyer, Allen D. 2003. Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan
Age. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press.
Hostettler, John. 1997. Sir Edward Coke: A Force for Freedom.
Chichester, England: Barry Rose.
Powell, Damian. 2000. “Coke in Context: Early Modern
Legal Observation and Sir Edward Coke’s Reports.”
Journal of Legal History 21 (December): 33–5.
Woolrych, Humphry W. 2002. The Life of the Right Honourable
Sir Edward Coke, Knt.: Lord Chief Justice of the
King’s Bench. Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange.

CROSS-REFERENCES
English Law “Dr. Bonham’s Case” (In Focus).