on the trunks of vice, our condemnation of Coke would be unqualified. In fierceness of demeanour he was more odious than Elizabeth's captains—in scholastic conceits more despicable than James's churchmen—in avarice more prurient than the ancient monks, and in bigotry not a whit less violent. His disposition was selfish, arrogant, and harsh. Lost in the acquisition of legal knowledge, and determined thereby to secure his own aggrandizement, he never was the centre of a genial friendship. As advocate he delighted in hectoring trembling criminals, and treating with rudeness his professional brethren. The lowest barrister in the Old Bailey, would this day blush to act the part of Coke in that altercation with Bacon in the court of exchequer. The violence of his manner contrasts painfully with the sustained dignity of the accomplished Raleigh, who—then on his trial for life—was thus addressed by Mr. Attorney—"Thou art a monster. Thou hast an English face and a Spanish heart. . . All that he did was by thy instigation, thou viper: for I thou thee, thou traitor." In his pleadings, he sometimes indulged in quaint antithetical expressions, much to the delight of King James. To one of the jesuits he once said—"You do not watch and pray, but you watch to prey." "True repentance," he said on another occasion, "is indeed never too late, but late repentance is seldom found true." When James, jealous of his purchases, told him he had as much land as a subject ought to possess, Coke, who was then in treaty for the purchase of Castle Acre priory, returned this answer with much pleasantry—"Then, please your majesty, I will only add one acre more."
Nothing can be more painful than the tale of his domestic history. His first marriage took place on the 13th of August, 1582. He was then thirty-two, and rapidly rising at the bar. The lady was the daughter of J. Paston, Esq., of Huntingfield hall, Suffolk, who brought him a fortune of £30,000. She died in 1598, after leading a life, as we must charitably suppose, of comparative happiness. This "most beloved and most excellent wife" had not been in her grave many months, when the astute attorney commenced his treaty for a union with the Lady Elizabeth Hatton, granddaughter of Burleigh, now a young, beautiful, and wealthy widow. The formalities of wooing were dispensed with, and the requisitions of the canonical law were also overlooked; so that Archbishop Whitgift summoned the rector, Coke, Burleigh, and all, into the spiritual court, and only remitted the penalty, on the plea of Coke's ignorance of the law. They soon found grounds for domestic dissension. There was an utter discrepancy of taste and manners, as well as of age. Coke spent his days toiling in court and chambers, while his lady was performing in court masques, and complimented by Ben Jonson's verses. In 1617 it was reported that "the Lord Coke and his lady had great wars at the council table."
Though conjugal love may sometimes fail, there must be some unnaturalness of character, where parental affection is obliterated. The conduct of Coke towards his daughter, then a child of fourteen, though not without parallel in the low morality of that age, exhibits a venality, seldom if ever known at the present time. Now in his sixty-sixth year, and through his sturdy independence as a judge thrust out of royal favour, instead of retiring into private life, with the consciousness of his judicial integrity, he determined to sacrifice his child to secure his restoration to honour and office. His plan was to many Frances to Sir John Villiers, Buckingham's brother. Lady Hatton (who had always refused to be called Lady Cook, as she spelt it) opposed the match. The child "voluntarily and deliberately protested that, of all men living, she could not have him." The mother, a high-handed woman, ran away with the daughter, and concealed her in a house of Lord Argyle's, near Hampton Court. Coke started off with his sons in pursuit, and, after breaking through several doors, dragged away the recusant daughter. A short time after he informs Buckingham that his daughter is quite in love with Villiers; which love on her part, however, exhibits itself in irrepressible snifflings and tears. Then follow negotiations about a settlement, shuffling on the part of the parent, hymeneal rejoicings, reception of the company by bride and bridegroom at their couchée, the elevation of Villiers to the peerage under the title of Viscount Parbeck, his desertion and flight to the continent, Lady Parbeck's frailty, and sentence to stand in a white sheet in the Savoy church, and her escape. The only redeeming passage in this affair is, that when the poor girl flew to Stoke for protection, she was kindly received in her degradation by her age-stricken father.
Leaving these domestic scenes, we shall now resume the history of Coke's public career. Having been fourteen years at the head of the bar, on the 30th of June, 1606, three years after receiving the honour of knighthood, he was made chief-justice of the common pleas. It is only as judge that we can contemplate the character of Coke with unmixed admiration. On the bench his conduct was independent and brave; in one or two instances worthy of Gascoigne and Fortescue. Though holding office durante bene placito, he ventured to excite the "great rage" of James, by telling his majesty, that he was not learned in the laws of England, and that it was by the law his majesty was protected in safety and peace. He opposed the high commissioner, resisted the claim of the king to sit and try causes, and pronounced an emphatic denial of the power of the crown to alter the law by "proclamations." Thus, by maintaining the prerogatives of the judicial office, and refusing to sanction the despotic pretensions of the king, he lost his lucrative office, and was removed in 1613 to the chief-justiceship of the king's bench. This mark of royal displeasure somewhat damped his courage. A short time after he gave a qualified support to "benevolences." In Peacham's case, after considerable grumbling against taking anticipatory opinions of the judges apart and in writing, this initial resistance ended in giving to Bacon his separate answers in his own hand. Complaints were made against him as chief-justice of the king's bench, for maintaining the jurisdiction of his court against the injunctions of the court of chancery. In one case. Chancellor Ellesmere granted an injunction against suing out execution on a judgment obtained in the king's bench by a gross fraud. Lord Coke declared this to be against the common law, and contrary to act of parliament; but, after taking infinite pains to prove his statement, he submitted to the king's decision, adding, "that he and his brethren had since entertained his majesty's commandment to the contrary, as an order of the court, with a promise to observe it." But in the commendams, Coke nobly sustained his character as a fearless judge. The question in this action (Colt v. Bishop of Lichfield) was, whether the king had a right to grant ecclesiastical benefices to be held along with a bishopric. The learned counsel, in the course of his address, indulged in some reflections upon the clergy, which the bishop of Winchester, in his report of the trial to the king, represented as an attack on one of the sacred prerogatives of the crown. After consulting Bacon, his attorney-general, a royal prohibition was issued, suspending the trial, until the king should intimate his pleasure to the judges. The royal mandate was disregarded, and the cause was heard and determined in due course. The judges were summoned to Whitehall to answer for their conduct. On being asked, whether they ought not, in a matter of supposed prerogative, to suspend trial until the king had consulted them, all of them, except Coke, answered—"Yes! yes! yes!" But Coke said calmly—"When the case happens, I shall do that which will be fit for a judge to do." In 1616, having made himself still more obnoxious to the court by his late conduct, he was summoned before the council, and being made to kneel, the earl of Suffolk pronounced the sentence of his suspension from the office of chief-justice. A few months later, the supersedeas received the royal signature, and Lord Coke was no longer chief-justice.
Stunned by this blow, Coke soon rallied and laid down that unfortunate plan for his restoration to which we have alluded. Bacon at first opposed his intrigues; but finding that the king approved of the proposed match, he opportunely changed his line of conduct, stopped the prosecution in the star-chamber, and declared himself a warm friend to the alliance of the Lady Frances with Sir S. Villiers. The ex-chief-justice did not derive from this alliance the advantages he had hoped for. The influence of Bacon was too strong, and the spleen of James too bitter, to leave any chance of reconciliation. Coke could make no nearer approach to royal confidence than a seat at the council table and star-chamber. This was the most inglorious period in his life. After four years of fruitless expectation he determined to join the ranks of the popular party. In 1620, after an interval of six years, parliament was again summoned, and Coke being now eligible, was returned for the borough of Liskeard in Cornwall. Here, properly speaking, his political career begins. Though twenty years before this date he had been elected speaker of the lower house, he distinguished himself more as attorney-general than as a statesman, his high arrogance, humiliated by rebuffs of the court, gradually changed into a stern determination to
