Coke, SIR EDWARD, jurist, was born of a good old Norfolk family, at Mileham, 1st February 1552. From Norwich grammar-school he passed in 1567 to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1571 to Clifford's Inn, in 1572 to the Inner Temple; and he was called to the bar in 1578. His rise was rapid—from recorder of Coventry (1585) to member for Aldborough (1589), Solicitor-general (1592), Speaker of the House of Commons (1593), Attorney-general (1594), Chief-justice of the Common Pleas (1606), Chief-justice of the King's Bench and privy-councilor (1613). Meanwhile he had married twice, first, in 1582, Bridget Paston, who brought him £30,000, and died 27th June 1598; next, nineteen weeks later, Lady Elizabeth Hatton, the granddaughter of his patron, Lord Burghley. The rancour shown by him in the prosecutions of Essex and Southampton, Raleigh, and the Gunpowder conspirators (1600-3-5) has gained him little credit with posterity; but from 1606 he stands forth as a vindicator of the national liberties, opposing, unlike Bacon, every illegal encroachment on the part of both church and crown. He dared to cite Bracton's words to James's face, that 'the king should be subject not to man, but to God and the law;' alone of twelve judges, he resisted the royal prerogative; and in the Overbury case he showed an indiscreet zeal to come at the real truth. His removal from the bench on most trivial grounds (November 1617) was aggravated by a quarrel with his wife; and though ten months afterwards he was recalled to the council, his conduct in parliament from 1620 as a leader of the popular party, an opponent of Spain and of monopolies, estranged him for ever from the court party. In 1621-22 he suffered nine months' durance in the Tower; still, old though he was, he carried his opposition into the next reign, the Petition of Right (1628) being largely his doing. He died at Stoke Poges, 3d September 1634, and was buried at Tittleshall in his native county.
Coke was a great lawyer, withal an honest lover of legality, but too bitter and narrow-minded to be really a great man. His four Institutes (1628-44) deal with tenures, statutes, criminal law, and the jurisdiction of the several law-courts. The first of these, and most famous, which in 1832 reached a 19th edition, is the so-called Coke upon Littleton (q.v.)—a commentary that, in spite of its puerile etymologies, has still a real, if mainly historical, value. Eleven of the thirteen parts of his epoch-making Law Reports were published during his lifetime (1600-15); and the whole, translated out of the original French and Latin, fills 6 vols. in Thomas and Fraser's edition (1826). Mr G. P. Macdonell mentions six minor works in his able and exhaustive article on Coke in the Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xi. 1887). See also the Lives by Woolrych (1826) and W. Johnson (2 vols. 1837). For a descendant, see LEICESTER OF HOLKHAM.