GUNPOWDER COKE
‘THAT great Elizabethan, Sir Edward ' Coke, was one of England’s most celebrated judges and probably the greatest common lawyer of all time. Throughout his life he upheld the Common Law against the other judges of his time, against the Church and even against the Crown. He had the conduct of several of the great trials of his day. In 1600 he prosecuted Essex and Southamption for their abortive rebellion against the Queen, in 1603 he prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh, and in 1605 the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. His greatest enemy was Sir Francis Bacon, who was his unsuccessful rival for the post of Attorney General, which Coke had won in 1593, and also, by a strange coincidence, for the hand of Lady Elizavane Hatton, whom Coke married in 98. Coke was made Chief Justice in 1606, and entered immediately into the series of conflicts which eventually broke his career. King James, in an endeavour to destroy the supremacy of the common law which Coke upheld, decreed that he himself, as fountain of justice, could remove any cases he liked from the judges and try them himself. But Coke challenged him and in a few years gave his celebrated pronouncement that the King’s proclamation cannot change the law. James and Bacon combined forces against Coke, and had him promoted upstairs to the King’s Bench, a position of greater dignity but less power. Coke fell at last through his hatred of Egerton, the chancellor, in a dispute with the chancery over the chancellor's right to = -.
interfere with a common law court decision. In 1616 the Privy Council, inspired by Bacon, preferred three charges against him and he was dismissed. In the following year he was back in the Star Chamber, after a tempestuous episode involving the marriage of his 14 year old daughter against her will and against the wishes of his wife, supported by Bacon. He entered parliament, attacked Bacon, was imprisoned, released and formulated the Bill of Liberties which ultimately became the Bill of Rights. He died in 1634. Coke’s story will, be told in the BBC programme Portrait of Sir Edwatd Coke, to be broadcast from 2YA at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, April 19. A _--$-$S- __ $$$
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 717, 10 April 1953, Page 15
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368GUNPOWDER COKE New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 717, 10 April 1953, Page 15
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