A fitter tool for its melancholy work prerogative never found than in Attorney-General Coke, who, for his punishment, lived to destroy the foul abuses he had been paid to nourish. The liberty of the subject is identified with the name of the individual who, as much as any of his time, sought to crush it. The perversions of criminal law to which this man condescended, as prosecutor for the Crown, are familiar to the readers of history. His cruel arrogance and atrocious bearing toward the unfortunate (we do not speak of the guilty) can never be forgotten. Lord Campbell tells us that Coke, in his age, "made noble amends" for the licentious and unscrupulous dealings of his earlier life. We can not admit the term; for repentance to be noble, the motive must be pure. The gain to society by the stand made by Coke, in the name of the people, against the encroachments of the Crown is not to be overestimated; but respect does not attach to the soiled instrument by which our blessings were secured. A singular instance of the brutality of the Attorney-General, and of his overstrained duty to the Crown, occurred at the trial of the unfortunate and gallant Essex. Well may the present biographer exclaim, "This was a humiliating day for our order!" Essex had striven hard to obtain for Bacon the office then held by his accuser. The insurrection in the city might sooner be pardoned than that offense, which, indeed, received no mercy. For once, Bacon and Coke ceased to be rivals, but only that they might be co-partners in inexpiable guilt. Divines may preach even to the infidel of the inherent rottenness of our fallen nature, when they can point to Bacon, the pride of humanity, the wonder of the civilized world, imploring to be counsel against his best friend and benefactor, and leaving no base means untried to bring that high and chivalrous spirit to the scaffold. Prerogative never boasted so rare a sacrifice; the might of kings never extorted so signal an acknowledgment.
On the 27th of June, 1598, Coke lost his wife, who had borne him ten children. His memorandum-book feelingly describes the virtues of the departed; but within four months of her burial the disconsolate widower had taken unto himself a second mate, whose beauty, though extraordinary, was still surpassed, as before, by the brilliancy of the marriage portion. Lady Hatton, daughter of Thomas Cecil, was the widow of the nephew of Lord Chancellor Hatton, and but 20 years of age when she agreed to become the wife of a man whom she disliked on her wedding-day and hated ever afterward. Bacon, her cousin, had preferred his suit to be rejected, although Lord Essex, then powerful enough, had declared to the lady that "if he had a daughter of his own he would rather match her with the accomplished lawyer than with a man of far greater titles." To spite Bacon, and to add to his heaps, Coke consented to a private marriage, to break the law, and to listen complacently to the openly declared aversion of his bride. He enjoyed all the happiness he had earned. The lady refused to adopt her husband's name, spurned his company and dry pursuits, took her pleasure abroad, and, giving birth to a daughter, flatly refused to live with him any longer; and greater punishment came hereafter.
Upon the death of Elizabeth, James I. conferred upon Coke the dignity of knighthood, and continued him in his office. The first appearance of the Attorney-General as public prosecutor in the new reign was at the trial of the adventurous Raleigh, the judge upon the occasion being the reformed highway-robber, Popham, who made amends for the delinquencies of his youth by hanging every criminal within his reach. Raleigh laid down the law as Coke himself years afterward knew how to define it; but the legal tools of the Court were neither to be shamed nor argued from their purpose. Coke disgracefully bullied the high-souled prisoner. Popham shrunk from his calm and unanswerable defense; but both contrived to prove him guilty. The instance is one of a hundred. So long as Coke could find payment for unclean work, he betrayed no uneasy desire to wash his fingers. It was not until all hope of turning sycophancy to further account was gone that he took up with patriotism.
Coke's last prosecution as Attorney-General was a famous one; for the objects of his malevolence were no other than Guy Faux and his accomplices. It would have been sufficient to dismiss in silence to the scaffold men upon whom the brand of guilt was so deeply fixed. Justice required no more than their death; much more readily satisfied the officious love of the king's devoted servant. While the Attorney-General was hurling insult at the heads of the culprits, one of them, Sir Everard Digby, interrupted him, confessing "that he deserved the vilest death, and the most severe punishment that might be," but humbly petitioned "for mercy and some moderation of justice." Coke, overflowing with mercy, promised him such moderation as he might discover in the Psalms, where it is written, "Let his wife be a widow and his children vagabonds—let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be quite put out." Digby's pathetic appeal upon the rising of the Court may well stand side by side with this brutality. "If I may but hear any of your lordships," exclaimed the doomed man, "say you forgive me, I shall go more cheerfully to the gallows." The lords answered in Coke's presence, "The Lord forgive you, and we do."
The gunpowder plot disposed of, Coke, in the year 1606, became Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, "fatigued," as Lord Campbell has it, "if not satiated, with amassing money at the bar." The new judge was as fully alive to the rights of his office as he had been before to the prerogatives of the king. The pedantic presumption of James was safe till it rubbed against the more stubborn pride of Coke. The monarch was of opinion that the constitution and the law allowed him personally to try causes between his loyal subjects. "By my soul," he said pettishly to Coke, who begged leave to differ, "I have often heard the boast that your English law was founded upon reason. If that be so, why have not I and others reason as well as you, the judges?" Coke explained why and by the manner of his explanation compelled the king to think no more of his folly. Unfortunately for all parties His Majesty at the same time remembered the affront.
Had he been disposed to forget it there was one at his side eager enough to jog his memory. Bacon's advancement depended upon the downfall of Coke, and the sublimest yet meanest of men gave his whole heart to the accomplishment of either work. By the elevation of the Attorney-General, Bacon had become Solicitor-General, and a more servile spirit never filled the office. The first triumph of Coke over the king encouraged him to more open war against despotism and abuse. The monarchs before the Revolution loved to repair laws by royal proclamation, and none were busier at that trade than the silly James. Coke asserted his authority again, and again defeated him. To console His Majesty and to help himself, Bacon recommended the promotion of the incorrigable assailant. Coke was made, accordingly, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. The profits of the office were much less than those of the Justice of the Common Pleas, although the rank was higher. Hence Coke's disgust at the bettering of his condition, which also helped Bacon on a step, by furnishing Attorney-General Hobart with the chiefship of the Common Pleas.
Coke continued to display his independence during the three years that he presided in the Court of King's Bench, but he had stopped short of committing an act that might deprive him of the reversion of the Chancellorship, to which his great acquirements and reputation well entitled him. Bacon, always alive to his master's interests, urged upon the king the danger of elevating the Chief Justice to the woolsack, long before the vacancy occurred. "If you take 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 the matter of your finances, which seemeth to aim at another place (the office of Lord Treasurer); and, lastly, popular men are no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." His Majesty, easily frightened, cherished the warning, while Coke took no pains to disarm suspicion. His triumphs gave him courage, and he went from bad to worse. A question arose as to the power of the king to grant ecclesiastical preferments to be held along with a bishopric. A learned counsel at the bar denied the power. Bacon, the Attorney-General, not caring to defend it, mentioned another power of the king's—viz., his right to prohibit the hearing of any cause in which his prerogative is concerned until he should intimate his pleasure on the matter to his judges; and advised such a prohibition to be issued in the case in question. Coke treated the advice with disdain, proceeded as with an ordinary cause, heard it, and judicially determined it. Bacon could have wished for nothing more suicidal.
Coke was summoned before the Privy Council. It was suddenly discovered that he had been guilty of a breach of duty while Attorney-General, in concealing a bond given to the Crown by Sir Christopher Hatton. He had also misconducted himself in a dispute with the Lord Chancellor respecting injunctions; moreover, he had insulted the king when called before him in the case of commendams. In addition, many extravagant and exorbitant opinions had been set down and published in his reports for positive and good law. So heinous an offender could not go unpunished. By royal mandate the delinquent was suspended from his office of Chief Justice. Simple suspension, however, brought no consolation to Bacon, who goaded the king to downright persecution. On the 16th of November, 1616, the Chief Justice received his dismissal. Lord Campbell pleads for the fallen man, who heard his sentence with "dejection and tears." We must, nevertheless, not forget the weakness when we reflect upon his abject submission to royalty during his days of dependence, and as we approach the more stormy times when the spirit of vengeance incited him to grapple with royalty in the temper of a rebel. Magnanimity is wanting throughout.
As Coke tumbled down Bacon rose to his zenith. While the former was shedding tears for his dismissal, the latter was intoxicated with joy by his elevation to the Chancellorship. The defeated judge, however, was not the man to submit without a struggle to his fate. By his second wife he had a daughter: she had reached a marriageable age and was heiress to a princely fortune. Coke resolved that she should marry Sir John Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham's eldest brother. Sir John was very poor, and the Duke of Buckingham all powerful. The union effected, what should hinder his return to favor? Bacon, terrified at the plot, encouraged mother and daughter to resist the will of the father; but Sir John and the duke were more than a match for the counter-conspirators. After a gallant opposition the ladies yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Hampton Court, "in the presence of the king and queen and all the chief nobility of England." Sir John was old enough to be his wife's father, but that was a trifle. The results of the match were such as might be expected. Coke was restored to the Privy Council, but received no judicial promotion. Sir John Villiers and his wife never passed a happy day together, and before long the lady eloped with Sir John Howard. "After traveling abroad in man's attire she died young, leaving a son, who, on the ground of illegitimacy, was not allowed to inherit the estate and honors of her husband."
The last blow decided the ex-Chief Justice. Rejected as a friend, he gave himself up to the warfare of relentless enmity. The fame and glory acquired at this juncture by his rival in consequence of the publication of the Novum Organum gave venom to his hate. A Parliament was called in 1620. Coke then in his 70th year, was elected for the borough of Liskeard. Just after his election the office of Lord Treasurer fell vacant. Coke had looked for it, but it was given elsewhere. All things served to fan the fire of his indignation. The Puritans were returned to the House in great numbers. Coke, hitherto a high churchman, placed himself at their head, and prepared for deadly opposition. Opportunities came to him as thick as summer leaves upon a tree. The nation had rare cause for discontent, and no man knew better than he how to turn popular grievances to personal account.