The petition of Sir Francis Michell to the House of Commons, 23rd February, 1620, contains trenchant criticisms on Coke’s conduct as partial and passionate. Though they may be somewhat discounted by the writer’s position, they must have had some basis of truth. Michell said that when summoned before the Bar, Sir Edward Coke prejudiced his cause by saying aloud, “When I was Chief-Justice, I knew Sir Francis Michell; he is a _tainted man_,” which saying discouraged his friends from speaking on his behalf. He repeats elsewhere that Coke was wont “to make invectives by the hourglass”; and indeed adds many other more serious charges. Michell was put out, as was the custom, when his case was being discussed. In his absence, he was condemned to go to the Tower, and on being re-admitted, thought he was to be allowed to defend himself as was the custom, and “asked leave to speak for himself, which Sir Edward Coke _hastened to refuse_” (Sir Simon d’Ewes’ Papers, Harl. MSS., 158, f. 224). “His rancour, descending to Brutality was infamous” (Dict. Nat. Biog.). Sir Francis Bacon writes to him, “As your pleadings were wont to insult our misery and inveigh literally against the person, so are you still careless in this point to praise or dispraise upon slight grounds and that suddenly, so that your reproofs or commendations are for the most part neglected and contemned, when the censure of a Judge coming slow but sure should be a brand to the guilty and a crown to the virtuous.... You make the laws too much lean to your opinion, whereby you show yourself to be a legal tyrant” (Foss’s “Lives of the Judges”). James I. is known to have called him “the fittest engine for a tyrant ever was in England.” He was an only son with seven sisters, which position probably made him overvalue his own sex. His well-known matrimonial disputes probably helped to increase his prejudice against the other sex. (3) That he could be _wilfully ignorant_ there is abundant ground to believe. He married again five months after his first wife’s death, without Banns or Licence, and to escape Excommunication, he pleaded Ignorance of the Law!! “Not only does he interpolate, but he is often inaccurate; sometimes, as in Gage’s case, he gives a wrong account of the decision, and still more often the authorities he cites do not bear out his propositions of law. This is a fault common to his Reports and his Institutes alike, and it has had very serious consequences upon English Law” (Dict. Nat. Biog.). Holt _v._ Lyle, and Catherine _v._ Surrey had been decided when he was Attorney-General. These affirmed that “a _feme sole_ could vote for a Parliament man.” The Gatton case had been decided in a Parliament, and by a Committee of which he was a member; and whether he had concurred in it or not, he cannot but have been aware that other members of Parliament, even in his day, allowed the woman’s privilege.