Edward Coke, the only son of Robert Coke, of Mileham, in the county of Norfolk, and Winifred, daughter and one of the heirs of William Knightley, of Morgrave-Knightley, in the same county, was born at Mileham, February 1, 1551. He was descended, both by his father’s and his mother’s side, from ancient and opulent families. His father, who was a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, died in the year 1561, when Edward Coke was ten years old. Before that event he had been sent to the Free Grammar School at Norwich, whence, in September, 1567, he removed to Cambridge, and was admitted as a fellow commoner at Trinity College. After having spent three years at the University he returned into Norfolk for a few months, and then went to London to commence his legal education. According to the practice of that time, he took the first step of his legal course by becoming a member of Clifford’s Inn, a house of Chancery, or inferior inn, dependent upon the Inner Temple, and was admitted into the latter society, April 24, 1572. He was called to the bar in Easter Term, 1578. During the continuance of his studies in the Inner Temple, he is said to have greatly distinguished himself in the exercises called mootings and readings, which constituted a necessary part of the education of an advocate in former times, and which were carried on with a degree of interest and excitement almost incredible to those who at the present day peruse the details of these grotesque and antiquated proceedings. In the course of the year after his call to the bar, the society of the Inner Temple appointed him reader at Lyon’s Inn; and the learning displayed by him, in the conduct of the exercises at which he presided in this capacity, raised for him a high reputation as a lawyer, and opened the way to that extensive practice at the bar, which he acquired with a degree of rapidity almost without a parallel in the history of the profession. In the first term after he was called to the bar he conducted an argument of much nicety and importance, which is reported by the name of Lord Cromwell’s Case; “And this,” he says, in his own report of it (4 Rep. 146), “was the first cause that the author of this book moved in the King’s Bench.” Less than three years afterwards he was associated with Popham, the Solicitor General, in arguing before the Chancellor and the twelve judges the important case in which was laid down the celebrated doctrine in the law of real property, well known as the ‘Rule in Shelley’s Case.’ From that period until he became Solicitor General in 1592, his practice was enormous: it appears from the Reports of that time that there was scarcely a single motion or argument before the court of King’s Bench in which he was not engaged. Professional honours were the legitimate consequence of this large business in the courts; in 1586 he was chosen Recorder of Norwich, and four years afterwards was made a bencher of the Inner Temple. In January, 1592, on