the upright and resolute Chief Justice of the King's Bench.* He exerts himself to justice the Sir Thomas bring to murderers of Overbury. He likewise escaped all censure in the affair of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. He had not been accessory to the infamous sentence by which, to please the caprice of the King, the young Countess of Essex, after carrying on an illicit intercourse with a paramour, obtained a divorce from her husband on the pretext that she still remained a virgin.† At her second marriage to the Earl of Somerset, he made her a wedding present; but, in thus assisting to give éclat to the ceremony, he followed the example of all courtiers, and of the Lord Mayor and citizens of London. Two years after, when the rumour broke out that before this ill-starred union she and her new husband had instigated the murder of the man who had tried to prevent it, he put forth all his energy to get at truth; although the King, from personal liking or some mysterious reason, wished to screen the most guilty parties from punishment. A.D. 1616. In former times, the Chief Justice and the Puisne Judges of the Court of King's Bench often acted as police magistrates, taking preliminary examinations, and issuing warrants for the apprehension of criminals. In this case Coke took not less than 300 examinations, writing down the words of the witnesses and of the parties accused with his own hand. "The Lord Chief Justice's name thus occurring," observed Bacon, “I cannot pass by it, and yet I have not skill to flatter. But this I will say of him, that never man's person and his place were better met in business than my Lord Coke and my Lord Chief Justice in the case of Overbury." * See 5 Bacon's Works, 353; Cro. Car. 125. +2 St. Tr. 786. Nevertheless, we should consider some of his proceedings very strange if they were imitated by a Chief Justice of the present age. Having granted the warrant, he actually went to Royston, where the Earl of Somerset was with the King, that he might himself superintend the arrest. Along with the other judges who were to preside at the trial, he marshalled the evidence, and concerted in what order it should be laid before the jury.* When charging the grand jury, he told them that "of all felonies, murder is the most horrible; of all murders, poisoning is the most detestable; and of all poisonings, the lingering poison,"-adding that " poisoning was a popish trick." When Mrs. Turner, one of the subordinate agents, was on her trial, he said " she had the seven deadly sins; for she was a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon, and a murderer." Sir John Hollis and others having, at the execution of Weston, who had been employed to administer the poison, made some observations on the manner in which his trial had been conducted by Lord Chief Justice Coke,-the same Chief Justice Coke, sitting in the Star Chamber, passed sentence upon them, ordering that, besides being subjected to fine and imprisonment, they should make an humble apology to himself at the bar of the Court of King's Bench. He then blurted out this witty parody, "Et quæ tanta fuit Tyburn tibi causa videndi ?" adding that "he himself never had attended executions after reading the lines in Ovid * There is extant a very curious letter of Mr. Attorney General Bacon to the King, about getting up the case:-" If your Majesty vouchsafe to direct it yourself, that is the best; if not, I humbly pray you to require my Lord Chancellor that he, together with my Lord Chief Justice, will confer with myself and my fellows that shall be used for the marshalling and bounding of the evidence, that we may have the help of his opinion as well as that of my Lord Chief Justice; whose great travels as I much commend, yet that same plerophoria or over-confidence doth always subject things to a great deal of chance." -22nd of January, 1615-16. "Et lupus et vulpes instant morientibus, At the arraignment of the Countess of Somerset, although she pleaded guilty, and Coke attended only as assessor to the Lord High Steward's Court, he said that "the persons engaged by her to commit the murder had before their death confessed the fact, and died penitent; and that he had besought their confessor to prove this, if need should require.” * But these things were quite according to the established rules of proceeding, and in no respect detracted from the credit which the Chief Justice acquired by the vigour and ability with which he had secured the conviction of the noble culprits;-and he was not suspected of being accessory to their pardon,-granted in consideration of their discreet silence on topics which the King was very desirous of keeping from public view.t Sir Edward Coke's high reputation now raised a general belief that he would succeed Lord Ellesmere as Chancellor. This threw Bacon into a state of alarm, and he wrote a letter to the King, strongly urging his own claims to the Great Seal, and disparaging his rival :— Bacon afraid that Coke would be made Lord Chancellor. "If you like my Lord Coke," said he, "this will follow,—first, your Majesty shall put an overruling nature into an overruling place, which may breed an extreme; next, you shall blunt his industries in matter of your finances, which seemeth to aim at another place; and, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle."§ In the course of one of these trials, the Chief Justice was placed in a very ridiculous situation. Those who were plotting against the life of Sir Thomas Overbury had superstitiously consulted one Forman, a conjurer, respecting their own fate; and this impostor had kept in a book a list of all those who had come to him to have their fortunes told. "I well remember," says Sir Anthony Welden," there was much mirth made in the court upon the showing this book; for it was reported the first leaf my Lord Coke lighted on he found his own wife's name."- Court and Character of King James, p. 111. 2 St. Tr. 911-1034; Amos's Oyer of Poisoning. This refers to the office of Lord Treasurer, which was afterwards conferred on Chief Justices. ◊ Bacon's Works, v. 371. The effect of this artful representation was much heightened by Coke's continued display of independence; for although he would, no doubt, have been well pleased to be promoted to the office of Chancellor, he would not resort to the compliances and low arts by which Bacon was successfully struggling to secure the prize. Coke's dispute with Lord Ellesmere about injunctions. On the contrary, from a sense of duty, he spontaneously involved himself in a controversy which made him very obnoxious to the Government. A love of power, or of popularity, very easily deludes a judge into the conviction that he is acting merely with a view to the public good, and under the sanction of his oath of office, when he is seeking unwarrantably to extend the jurisdiction of his court. Lord Chancellor Ellesmere having very properly granted an injunction against suing out execution on a judgment obtained in the King's Bench by a gross fraud, Lord Chief Justice Coke, asserting that this was a subversion of the common law of England, and contrary to an act of parliament, induced the party against whom the injunction was granted to prepare an indictment against the opposite party, his counsel, his solicitor, and the Master in Chancery who had assisted the Chancellor when the injunction was granted. He then took infinite pains in seeking out and marshalling the evidence by which the prosecution was to be supported. The grand jury, however, threw out the indictment; and the matter being brought before the King, he decided with a high hand in favour of the Court of Chancery.* Bacon, rejoicing to see that he could now have no rival for the Great Seal, wrote to the King, with seeming magnanimity, "My opinion is plainly that my * See Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii. ch. 1. Lord Coke at this time is not to be disgraced." Nevertheless he inveighed against his rival for "the affront offered to the well-deserving person of the Chancellor when thought to be dying,-which was barbarous." Coke incurs the King's high displeasure in Commen the case of dams. The deadly offence at last given to the King was by the proceedings in the "case of Commendams,"* in which Coke's conduct was not only independent and energetic, but in strict conformity to the law and constitution of the country, and every way most meritorious. A question arising as to the power of the King to grant ecclesiastical preferments to be held along with a bishopric, a learned counsel, in arguing at the bar, denied this power, and answered the reason given for it" that a bishop should be enabled to keep hospitality "--by observing that "no man is obliged to keep hospitality beyond his means," and by a sarcastic comparison between the riches of modern prelates and the holy apostles, who maintained themselves by catching fish and making tents. The Bishop of Winchester, who happened to be present at a trial in which his order was so deeply concerned, was highly incensed by these liberties, and, hurrying off to the King, represented to him that the Judges had quietly allowed an attack to be made on an important prerogative of the Crown, which ought to be held sacred. Bacon, the Attorney General, being consulted, he mentioned a power which, according to many precedents, the King possessed, of prohibiting the hearing of any cause in which his prerogative was concerned, Rege inconsulto,— i.e. until he should intimate his pleasure on the matter to the Judges; and it was resolved that in this case such a prohibition should issue. Accordingly Bacon, in the King's name, wrote a letter to Sir E. Coke and the other Judges, saying * Colt v. Bishop of Lichfield, Hobart, 193. April 25. |