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Sir Edward Coke, defender of civil liberties and tyrannical father
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As attorney general (1594-1606) Coke earned a reputation for prosecutorial savagery. From 1606 to 1613, as chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, he led the resistance to King James I's abuse of the royal prerogative, insisting that royal proclamations contrary to the common law were null and void and enunciating doctrines of individual liberty that would have a profound effect on history. The king believed that elevating Coke to the chief justiceship of the Court of King's Bench (lord chief justice of England) would render him a tool of the crown. Although he was made Lord Chief Justice in 1613, Coke proved as unyielding as ever and had to be dismissed in 1616. Subsequently, as a member of Parliament, he helped frame the Petition of Right (1628), an important document setting out the rights and
liberties of the subject as opposed to the prerogatives
of the crown. It stated parliamentary grievances and forbade the
levying of taxes without parliamentary consent,
arbitrary imprisonment, forced billeting, and martial
law.
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