Peter's churchyard, in that city. Within seventy paces of it, a marble monument has been erected to him in the Botanic Garden, by a late Bishop of Constance. He left a wife and numerous family ill provided for. His voluminous manuscripts are now deposited in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg. Only one volume of letters, in folio, has been published from them; and out of these the chief materials for his biography have been extracted.

EDWARD COKE, the only son of Robert Coke, of Mileham, in the county of Norfolk, and Winifred, daughter and one of the heirs of William Knightley, of Morgrave-Knightley, in the same county, was born at Mileham, February 1, 1551. He was descended, both by his father's and his mother's side, from ancient and opulent families. His father, who was a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, died in the year 1561, when Edward Coke was ten years old. Before that event he had been sent to the Free Grammar School at Norwich, whence, in September, 1567, he removed to Cambridge, and was admitted as a fellow commoner at Trinity College. After having spent three years at the University he returned into Norfolk for a few months, and then went to London to commence his legal education. According to the practice of that time, he took the first step of his legal course by becoming a member of Clifford's Inn, a house of Chancery, or inferior inn, dependent upon the Inner Temple, and was admitted into the latter society,

April 24, 1572. He was called to the bar in Easter Term, 1578. During the continuance of his studies in the Inner Temple, he is said to have greatly distinguished himself in the exercises called mootings and readings, which constituted a necessary part of the education of an advocate in former times, and which were carried on with a degree of interest and excitement almost incredible to those who at the present day peruse the details of these grotesque and antiquated proceedings.

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In the course of the year after his call to the bar, the society of the Inner Temple appointed him reader at Lyon's Inn; and the learning displayed by him, in the conduct of the exercises at which he presided in this capacity, raised for him a high reputation as a lawyer, and opened the way to that extensive practice at the bar, which he acquired with a degree of rapidity almost without a parallel in the history of the profession. In the first term after he was called to the bar he conducted an argument of much nicety and importance, which is reported by the name of Lord Cromwell's Case; And this," he says, in his own report of it (4 Rep. 146), I was the first cause that the author of this book moved in the King's Bench." Less than three years afterwards he was associated with Popham, the Solicitor General, in arguing before the Chancellor and the twelve judges the important case in which was laid down the celebrated doctrine in the law of real property, well known as the 'Rule in Shelley's Case. From that period until he became Solicitor General in 1592, his practice was enormous: it appears from the Reports of that time that there was scarcely a single motion or argument before the court of King's Bench in which he was not engaged. Professional honours were the legitimate consequence of this large business in the courts: in 1586 he was chosen Recorder of Norwich,

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and four years afterwards was made a bencher of the Inner Temple. In January, 1592, on the resignation of Serjeant Fleetwood, he was elected Recorder of London; but, in the following June, on being appointed Solicitor General, he resigned that office. In the same summer he became Reader of the Inner Temple, and selected the Statute of Uses for the subject of his readings. He says that he had composed seven readings for this occasion, and had delivered five of them to a large audience, consisting of not less than 160 members of the society, when the appearance of the plague in the Middle Temple, which raged with great violence in the autumn of that year, compelled him to discontinue them, and to leave London abruptly for his house at Huntingfield in Suffolk. Such was the honour and respect in which he was held by the profession, that on this occasion he was accompanied on his journey, as far as Romford, by a procession composed of nine benchers and forty other members of the Inner Temple. In March, 1594, he was appointed Attorney General, and, as the office of Solicitor continued vacant until the close of the following year, the duties and labours of both offices during that interval devolved upon him.

At this period originated the animosity between Coke and Bacon, which prevailed with little intermission during the life of the latter. As soon as the office of Attorney General became vacant, in consequence of the removal of Sir Thomas Egerton, the Earl of Essex used his most strenuous efforts to induce the Queen to bestow that place upon Bacon, instead of promoting Sir Edward Coke from the inferior office of Solicitor General. The letters of Bacon, written to Essex and others, with relation to this intrigue, abound with sarcastic and contemptuous expressions respecting Coke, whose high reputation and great experience certainly marked him out as fitter for

the office than his rival, whose practice at the bar was never extensive, and who was then scarcely known in the courts. After Coke had obtained the appointment of Attorney General, Bacon and his friends charged him first with intriguing to keep the emoluments of both offices in his own hands, and afterwards with recommending Serjeant Fleming for the vacant solicitorship, and encouraging the antipathies and prejudices of the Queen against Bacon. There is, however, no evidence to show that these imputations were true; and if Coke really urged the appointment of Fleming, it might well be with the view of obtaining a more experienced and efficient coadjutor than Bacon.

În truth, the state services imposed upon the Attorney General at this time were extremely laborious. The severity of the laws recently introduced against Roman Catholics had occasioned a succession of plots by foreign adventurers against the person of the Queen, more or less dangerous, the investigation of which was necessarily committed to the Attorney General. The treasons of Lopez, the Queen's physician, of Patrick Cullen, and of Williams and Yorke, all occurred about this period; and the business of constant examination at the Tower, in addition to his Star Chamber duties and his undiminished practice in the common-law courts, must have imposed a weight of labour and responsibility upon Coke, which no mind of ordinary activity and energy could have sustained. Whole volumes of examinations in these cases of treason, taken by himself and written with his own hand, are still preserved at the State Paper Office, and sufficiently attest his zeal and assiduity in the service.

In February, 1593, Coke, being at that time Solicitor General, was elected a member of parliament for his native county of Norfolk. In his own memorandum of this circumstance he says, that the election was "unanimous, free, and spontaneous, without any