Following a promotion to Attorney General he led the prosecution in several notable cases, including those against Robert Devereux, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators.

[5] Historically, he was a highly influential judge; within England and Wales, his statements and works were used to justify the right to silence, while the Statute of Monopolies is considered to be one of the first actions in the conflict between Parliament and monarch that led to the English Civil War.

Her father and grandfather had practised law in the Norfolk area, and her sister Audrey was married to Thomas Gawdy, a lawyer and Justice of the Court of King's Bench with links to the Earl of Arundel.

[43] His lectures were on the Statute of Uses, and his reputation was such that when he retired to his house after an outbreak of the plague, "nine Benchers, forty barristers, and others of the Inn accompanied him a considerable distance on his journey" in order to talk to him.

[54] After "disabling" himself in the House of Lords (a ceremony in which the incoming Speaker apologised for his failings) Parliament was suspended until 24 February;[55] Coke returned two days later, having suffered from a stomach problem.

The Parliament was intended to be a brief and simple one; with the Black Death resurgent throughout England and the threat of Spain on the horizon, the only matter was to impose certain taxes to fund the Queen's campaign against the Spanish, with no bills to be introduced.

[65] On 5 June 1600, he faced a panel of Privy Councillors, judges and members of the nobility at York House, where he was charged with appointing generals without the Queen's permission, ignoring orders and negotiating "very basely" with the leader of the rebel forces.

[77] Raleigh was brought to trial on 17 November 1603, on charges of "conspiring to deprive the King of his Government; to alter religion; to bring in the Roman superstition; and to procure foreign enemies to invade the kingdom".

Initially written down by William Blackstone, this theory makes Parliament the sovereign law-maker, preventing the common law courts from not only throwing aside but also reviewing statutes in the fashion Coke suggested.

[113] Marbury v. Madison, the American case which forms the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution, uses the words "void" and "repugnant", seen as a direct reference to Coke.

[114] Some academics, such as Edward Samuel Corwin, have argued that Coke's work in Bonham's Case forms the basis of judicial review and the declaration of legislation as unconstitutional in the United States.

The in commendam writ was a method of transferring ecclesiastical property, which James used in this case to allow Richard Neile to hold his bishopric and associated revenues without actually performing the duties.

[128] Coke became a leading opposition MP, along with Robert Phelips, Thomas Wentworth and John Pym, campaigning against any military intervention and the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Maria Anna.

[129] His position at the head of the opposition was unsurprising given his extensive experience in both local and central government, as well as his ability to speak with authority on matters of economics, parliamentary procedure and the law.

[157] When Parliament was dissolved in 1629, Charles decided to govern without one, and Coke retired to his estate at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, about 20 miles west of London, spending his time making revisions to his written works.

[158] He made no attempt to return to politics, stating that the Petition of Right would be left as his "greatest inheritance"; his desire to complete his writings, coupled with his advanced age, may also have been factors.

[170] The couple settled at the manor of Huntingfield, described by Catherine Drinker Bowen as "enchanting, with a legend for every turret ... A splendid gallery ran the length of the house, the Great Hall was built around six massive oaks which supported the roof as they grew".

[181] Of Coke's many children, the one who came at the last in his final years of life to manage his house at Stoke Poges and watch over him was ironically his youngest child, Frances Villiers.

With a band of ten retainers including his son Clem, the party crashed through the front door of Sir Withipole's house using a heavy piece of timber and found Frances and Lady Hatton upstairs.

[184] John Campbell, in The Lives of the Chief Justices of England, had said that "His reasoning... is narrow minded; [he had] utter contempt for method and style in his compositions",[185] and says that Coke's Reports were "tinctured with quaintness and pedantry".

A modern lawyer who heaps his abuse on Coke and his writings seems as ungrateful as a man who climbs a high wall with the aid of the sturdy shoulders of another and then gives his friend a parting kick in the face as he makes the final leap.

[192] John Baker has described them as "perhaps the single most influential series of named reports",[5] and even Francis Bacon, Coke's rival, wrote in praise of them, saying "Had it not been for Sir Edward Coke's Reports (which though they may have errors, and some peremptory and extrajudicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good decisions and rulings over of cases), for the law by this time had been almost like a ship without ballast; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time".

This served as an alternative to the Roman law lectures at university, which were based on Latin;[201] according to Bowen, it was "a double vision; the Institutes as authority, the Reports as illustration by actual practise".

This principle was justified by the idea that a judge, through his professional training, internalised what political historian and theorist Alan Cromartie referred to as "an infinity of wisdom", something that mere politicians or laypersons could not understand due to the complexity of the law.

[208] Coke's Commentary on Littleton has been interpreted as deliberately obtuse, with his aim being to write what Cromartie called "a sort of anti-textbook, a work whose very form denied that legal knowledge could be organised.

[218] The Statute of Monopolies, the foundation for which was laid by Coke and which was drafted by him, is considered one of the first steps towards the eventual English Civil War,[219] and also "one of the landmarks in the transition of [England's] economy from the feudal to the capitalist".

[225] Coke was also a strong influence on and mentor of Roger Williams, an English theologian who founded the Rhode Island colony in North America and was an early proponent of the doctrine of separation of church and state.

Most early lawyers were not noted for their eloquence, with Thomas Elyot writing that "[they] lacked elocution and pronunciation, two of the principal parts of rhetorike",[228] and Roger Ascham saying that "they do best when they cry loudest", describing a court case where an advocate was "roaring like a bull".

[231] Francis Watt, writing in the Juridical Review, portrays this as Coke's strongest characteristic as a lawyer: that he was a man who "having once taken up a point or become engaged in a case, believes in it with all his heart and soul, whilst all the time conscious of its weakness, as well as ready to resort to every device to bolster it up".

[232] Writers have struggled to reconcile his achievements as a judge surrounding the rejection of executive power and the rights of man with his tenure as Attorney General, with Gerald P. Bodet noting that his early career as a state prosecutor was one of "arrogance and brutality".