“Oh, noble Kent, quoth he, this praise doth thee belong, The hard’st to be control’d, impatientest of wrong; Who, when the Norman first with pride and horror swayed, Threw’st off the servile yoke upon the English laid; And with a high resolve, most bravely didst restore That liberty so long enjoyed by thee before, Not suffering foreign laws shall thy free customs bind. Then only showd’st thyself of th’ ancient Saxon kind. Of all the English Shires be thou surnam’d the Free, And foremost ever placed, when they shall reckoned be.” (Drayton’s “Poly-Olbion.” Ed. 1738, Song 18th, p. 33.) In Testa de Neville, and Rotuli Hundredorum, the large proportion of women’s names as owners of land, in Kent, proves the difference wrought by the working of the Saxon Inheritance Laws.] [vi.—“The learned Selden,” page 99.] Selden writes warmly in favour of women, and quotes many authorities in support of his opinion. Besides those that have been quoted, we may notice that he refers to Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. “Plato allowed women to govern, nor did Aristotle (whatever the Interpreters of his Politics foolishly say) take from them that privilege. Vertue shuts no door against anybody, any sex, but freely admits all. And Hermes Trismegistus, that thrice great man, in his Poemander, according to his knowledge of Heavenly concerns (and that sure was great in comparison of what the owl-eyed Philosophers had) he ascribes the mystical name of MALE-FEMALE to the great Understanding, to wit, God the Governor of the Universe” (“Janus Anglorum”).] [vii.—“Sir Edward Coke,” page 104.] In Foss’s “Lives of the Judges of England,” VI. 112, he says, “In the trial of Essex, he gave the first specimen of that objurgatory and coarse style, which makes his oratory so painfully remembered.” He also tells about his unhappy second marriage, and its ominous opening. In the Trials for the Murder of Sir Thomas Overburg, Foss says, “Guilty, as the parties undoubtedly were, Coke conducted the Trial most unfairly.” In regard to the suspicions attending the death of Prince Henry, Sir Anthony Weldon records—“It was intended the Law should run in its proper channel, but was stopt and put out of its course, by the folly of that great Clerke, though no wise man, Sir Edward Coke” (“The Court and Character of King James”). Sir E. Conway writes in 1624—“Sir Edward Coke would die, if he could not help to ruin a great man once in seven years.” “Butler notices that Coke had not studied the Feudal Law” (“Dict. Nat. Biog.”). This may account for his ignorance of the powers of women. “The Lord Coke in his Preface to Littleton, thinks Littleton’s Tenures were first printed in 24 Hen. VIII; my Lord was _mistaken_” (J. Anstiss Nicholl’s “Illustrations of Literature”).