Sir Edward Coke - Lord Coke, his contemporaries called him - was Queen Elizabeth's Attorney General and Chief Justice under James, first Stuart King of England ... Coke's life covered a long span, a wide arc of time; with him the Middle Ages ended and today began. Coke was English law personified. ... Sir Edward Coke never set foot on American soil. Yet no United States citizen can read his story without a sense of immediate recognition. In these parliamentary struggles, knights, citizens and burgesses fought not for themselves alone but for states as yet unformed: Pennsylvania, Virginia, California. In Westminster courtroom battles over procedure, jurisdiction, "right reason and the common law," constitutional government found its way to birth. When the time came we changed the face of this English constitution; amid the sound of guns we repudiated what we hated, adapted what we liked. Yet the heritage endured. -- PREFACE.

Originally published: New ed. / by John Henry Thomas, ... John Farquhar Fraser. London: J. Butterworth & Sons, 1826. New introd. by Stephen Sheppard.

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the first judge to strike down a law, gave us modern common law by turning medieval common law inside-out. Through his resisting strong-minded kings, he bore witness for judicial independence. Coke is the earliest judge still cited routinely by practicing lawyers. This book breaks new ground as the first scholarly biography of Coke, whose most recent general biography appeared in 1957, and draws revealingly on Coke's own papers and notebooks. The book covers Coke’s early life and career, to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603 (a second volume will cover Coke’s career under James I and Charles I). In particular, this book highlights Coke's close connection with the Puritans of England; his learning, legal practice, and legal theory; his family life and ambitious dealings; and the treason cases he prosecuted.

This study of Edward Coke's legal thought reinterprets the political and legal thought of early Stuart England.

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