Portal:Law/Biography/Week 15 2006

Sir Edward Coke (pronounced "cook") (1 February 1552 – 3 September 1634), educated at Norwich School, was an early English colonial entrepreneur and jurist whose writings on the English common law were the definitive legal texts for some 300 years.

He became a Member of Parliament in 1589, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1592 and was appointed England's Attorney General in 1593, a post for which he was in competition with his rival Sir Francis Bacon. During this period, he was a zealous prosecutor of Sir Walter Raleigh and of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1606. In 1613, he was elevated to Chief Justice of the King's Bench, where he continued his defense of the English common law against the encroachment by the ecclesiastical hierarchy, local courts controlled by the aristocracy, and meddling by the King.

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