Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cooke, William (1757-1832)
COOKE, WILLIAM (1757–1832), legal writer, second son of John Cooke, was born at Calcutta, where his father was a member of the council, in 1757, and was educated at Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1776. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 19 Nov. 1777. He was called to the bar there in November 1782, and in 1785 published a small treatise on the ‘Bankrupt Laws.’ He soon obtained a considerable practice in chancery and bankruptcy, and in 1816 was made K.C. and bencher of his inn. In 1818 he was commissioned by Sir John Leach, V.C., to proceed to Milan for the purpose of collecting evidence concerning the conduct of Queen Caroline. He reached Milan in September of that year, and reported the result of his investigations in July 1819. The report, which was forthwith laid before the cabinet, led to the introduction of the celebrated ‘Bill of Pains and Penalties against Her Majesty.’ About this time Cooke began to be much troubled by frequent attacks of gout, and abandoned court practice. He continued, however, to practise as a chamber counsel until 1825, when he retired from the profession. He was one of the witnesses examined before the commission on chancery procedure in 1824. During the last few years of his life he resided at his house, Wrinsted or Wrensted Court, Frinsted, Kent, where he died on 14 Sept. 1832. His work on the ‘Bankrupt Laws’ passed through eight editions, and was during his life the standard authority on the subject. It has long been superseded by more modern treatises, and the successive modifications which the law of bankruptcy has undergone during the last fifty years have rendered much of it entirely obsolete. It still, however, retains a certain value for the practitioner as an eminently lucid and virtually exhaustive digest of the earlier law. The fourth edition appeared in 1797, and the eighth and last, revised by George Roots (2 vols. 8vo), in 1823. Cooke is often erroneously credited with the works of William Cook [q. v.], miscellaneous writer.
[Legal Observer, iv. 375 (a very inaccurate account, partially corrected in vii. 101); Ch. Com. Rep. App. A. No. 6; Hansard, ii. 266; Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon, ii. 401; Gent. Mag. cii. pt. ii. 286; Lincoln's Inn Reg.; Hasted's Kent, ii. 512.]