t of examining the
prisoners stretched on the rack, at the Tower. Volumes of examinations
of prisoners under torture, in Coke's own handwriting, are still
preserved at the State Paper Office, which, says Campbell,
"sufficiently attest his zeal, assiduity and hard-heartedness in the
service.... He scrupulously attended to see the proper degree of pain
inflicted." Yet this severe prosecutor, bitter advocate and cruel
examiner, became a Chief Justice of tolerable courtesy, moderate
severity, and unimpeachable integrity.

If he had everything his own way in the criminal court and the torture
chamber, Coke did not find his wishes altogether unopposed in his
family. To begin with, he suffered the perpetual insult of the refusal
on the part of his wife to be called by his name. If her first husband
had been of higher rank, it might have been another matter: but both
were only knights, and it was a parallel case to the widow Jones,
after she had married Smith, insisting upon still calling herself Mrs.
Jones. Lady Elizabeth defended her conduct on this point as
follows:[3] "I returned this answer: that if Sir Edward Cooke would
bury my first husband accordinge to his own directions, and also paie
such small legacys as he gave to divers of his friends, in all cominge
not to above L700 or L900, at the most that was left unperformed, he
having all Sir William Hatton's goods & lands to a large proportion,
then would I willingly stile myself by his name. But he never yielded,
so I consented not to the other." Whether Hatton or Coke, as an Earl's
daughter she was Lady Elizabeth, by which name alone let us know her.

Campbell states that, after the birth of Frances, Sir Edward and Lady
Elizabeth "lived little together, although they had the prudence to
appear to the world to be on decent terms till the heiress was
marriageable." Coke had been astute enough to secure a comfortable
country-house, at a very convenient distance from London, through Lady
Elizabeth. Her ladyship had held a mortgage upon Stoke Pogis, a place
that belonged formerly to the Earls of Huntingdon,[4] and Coke, either
by foreclosing or by selling, obtained possession of the property. As
it stood but three or four miles to the north of Windsor, the
situation was excellent.[5] Sir Edward's London house was in the then
fashionable quarter of Holborn, a place to which dwellers in the city
used to go for change of air.[6] As Coke and his wife generally
quarrelled when