In truth, the state services imposed upon the Attorney General at this time were extremely laborious. The severity of the laws recently introduced against Roman Catholics had occasioned a succession of plots by foreign adventurers against the person of the Queen, more or less dangerous, the investigation of which was necessarily committed to the Attorney General. The treasons of Lopez, the Queen’s physician, of Patrick Cullen, and of Williams and Yorke, all occurred about this period; and the business of constant examination at the Tower, in addition to his Star Chamber duties and his undiminished practice in the common-law courts, must have imposed a weight of labour and responsibility upon Coke, which no mind of ordinary activity and energy could have sustained. Whole volumes of examinations in these cases of treason, taken by himself and written with his own hand, are still preserved at the State Paper Office, and sufficiently attest his zeal and assiduity in the service. In February, 1593, Coke, being at that time Solicitor General, was elected a member of parliament for his native county of Norfolk. In his own memorandum of this circumstance he says, that the election was “unanimous, free, and spontaneous, without any canvassing or solicitation on his part.” At the meeting of parliament he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. In the year 1582, Coke married the daughter and heiress of John Paston, Esq., of Huntingfield, in Suffolk, through whom he became connected with several families of great opulence and importance, and with whom he received a fortune of 30,000_l._—a very large dowry in those days. By this lady he had ten children. She died in June 1598; and in his private register of this event in the Notes, which have been often before referred to, he calls her “dilectissima et præclarissima uxor,” and concludes his brief notice of her decease thus:—“Bene et beaté vixit, et tanquam vera ancilla Domini obdormivit in Domino, et nunc vivit et regnat in cœlo.” In the month of November in the same year, Coke contracted a second marriage with the widow of Sir William Hatton, daughter of Thomas Lord Burleigh, and grand-daughter of the Lord High Treasurer, which, though it was an advantageous alliance in point of connection and brought him a considerable accession of property, was by no means a source of domestic happiness. The marriage itself involved all the parties concerned in considerable embarrassment: for having taken place without license or banns, Coke and his lady, together with the clergyman, Lord Burleigh, and all who were present at the ceremony, were cited to appear in the Archbishop’s Court; and it was only in consequence of their making full submission, and pleading their ignorance of the law, (a singular excuse in Coke’s mouth,) that they escaped the sentence and penalties of excommunication.