The lion and the throne : the life and times of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) | WorldCat.org
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. The volumes that he wrote "The Institutes of the Laws of England" and "The First Part of the Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Knight" became the backbone of legal studies in England and America for three centuries. As Judge and leader of the Commons, Coke risked his life for principles which today we take for granted: a prisoner's right to a public trial and the writ of habeas corpus, a man's right not to be jailed without cause shown, and his right against self-incrimination in a court of law. 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. -- author's preface
Print Book, English, 1957
Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1957