COEN, JAN PIETERSZOON (1587-1630), fourth governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, was born at Hoorn, and spent his youth at Rome in the house of the famous merchants the Piscatori. In 1607 he sailed from Amsterdam to the Indies as second commercial agent, and remained away four years. He had proved so capable that in 1612 he was sent out a second time at the head of a trading expedition. In the following year he was made a councillor and director-general of the East Indian trade. Afterwards he became president at Bantam, and on the 31st of October 1617 he was promoted in succession to Laurens Reaal to the post of governor-general. To his vigour and intrepidity the Dutch in no small measure owed the preservation and establishment of their empire in the East. He took and destroyed Jacatra, and founded on its ruins the capital of the Dutch East Indies, to which he gave the name of Batavia. In 1622 Coen obtained leave to resign his post and return to Holland, but in his absence great difficulties had arisen with the English at Amboina (the so-called massacre of Amboina), and in 1627 under pressure from the directors of the East India Company he again returned as governor-general to Batavia. In 1629 he was able to beat off a formidable attack of the sultan of Mataram, sometimes styled emperor of Java, upon Batavia. He died the following year.
COENACULUM, the term applied to the eating-room of a Roman house in which the supper (coena) or latest meal was taken. It was sometimes placed in an upper storey and reached by an external staircase. The Last Supper in the New Testament was taken in the Coenaculum, the “large upper room” cited in St Mark (xiv. 15) and St Luke (xxii. 12).
CŒNWULF (d. 821), king of Mercia, succeeded to the throne in 796, on the death of Ecgfrith, son of Offa. His succession is somewhat remarkable, as his direct ancestors do not seem to have held the throne for six generations. In 798 he invaded Kent, deposed and imprisoned Eadberht Præn, and made his own brother Cuthred king. Cuthred reigned in Kent from 798 to 807, when he died, and Cœnwulf seems to have taken Kent into his own hands. It was during this reign that the archbishopric of Lichfield was abolished, probably before 803, as the Hygeberht who signed as an abbot at the council of Cloveshoe in that year was presumably the former archbishop. Cœnwulf appears from the charters to have quarrelled with Wulfred of Canterbury, who was consecrated in 806, and the dispute continued for several years. It was probably only settled at Cloveshoe in 825, when the lawsuit of Cwœnthryth, daughter and heiress of Cœnwulf, with Wulfred was terminated. Cœnwulf may have instigated the raid of Æthelmund, earl of the Hwicce, upon the accession of Ecgberht. He died in 821, and was succeeded by his brother Ceolwulf I.
See Earle and Plummer’s edition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 796, 819 (Oxford, 1892); W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, 378 (London, 1885-1893).
(F. G. M. B.)
COERCION (from Lat. coercere, to restrain), an application of moral or physical compulsion by which a person is forced to do or refrain from doing some act or set of acts apart from his own voluntary motion. Where the coercion is direct or positive, i.e. where the person is compelled by physical force to do an act contrary to his will,—for example, when a man is compelled to join a rebel army, and to serve as a soldier under threats of death,—his act is not legally a crime. Where the coercion is implied, as when a person is legally under subjection to another, the person coerced, having no will on the subject, is not responsible. But this principle is applied only within narrow limits, and does not extend to the command of a superior to an inferior; of a parent to a child; of a master to his servant or a principal to his agent. Where, however, a married woman commits a crime in the presence of her husband, she is generally presumed to have acted by his coercion, and to be entitled to acquittal, but this presumption does not extend to grave crimes, nor to those in which the principal part may be supposed to be taken by the woman, such as keeping a brothel. In civil matters, such as the making of a contract, where the law requires the free assent of the person who undertakes the obligation, coercion is a ground for invalidating the instrument.