e being reargued three times (7 Mod., 264), and
the greatest respect was manifested by the whole court for
those precedents. Their importance is all the greater when
we consider what the matter was upon which King James'
judges sitting in Westminster Hall had to decide. It was not
simply the case of a mere occupier, inhabitant, or scot or
lot voter. Therefore the question did not turn upon the
purport of a special custom, or a charter, or a local act of
Parliament, or even of the common right in this or that
borough. But it was that very matter and question which has
been mooted in the dictum of Lord Coke, the freeholder's
franchise in the shire, and upon that the decision in each
case expressly was, that a feme sole shall vote if she hath
a freehold, and that if she be not a feme sole, but a feme
covert having freehold, then her husband during her
coverture shall vote in her right. These, then, are so many
express decisions which at once displace Lord Coke's
unsupported assertion and declare the law so as to constrain
my judgment. It is sometimes said, when reference is made to
precedents of this kind, that they have never been approved
by the bar. But that can not be said of these. Hakewell, the
contemporary of Lord Coke and one of the greatest of all
parliamentary lawyers then living--for even Selden and
Granvil were not greater than Hakewell--left behind him the
manuscript to which I have referred, with his comments on
those cases.

Sir William Lee, Chief Justice, in his judgment in the case of
Olive _vs._ Ingraham, expressly says that he had perused them,
and that they contained the expression of Hakewell's entire
approval of the principles upon which they were decided, and of
the results deduced; and we have the statement of Lord Chief
Justice Lee, who had carefully examined those cases, that in the
case of Holt _vs._ Lyle, it was determined that a feme sole
freeholder may claim a vote for Parliament men; but if married,
her husband must vote for her. In the case of Olive _vs._
Ingraham, Justice Probyn says:

The case of Holt _vs._ Lyle, lately mentioned by our Lord
Chief Justice, is a very strong