hter of Thomas, second Lord Burghley, and granddaughter of
the great Cecil. Bacon was again his rival, and again unsuccessfully;
the wealthy young widow became--not, it is said, to his future
comfort--Coke's second wife.

In 1606 Coke was made chief justice of the common pleas, but in 1613 he
was removed to the office of chief justice of the king's bench, which
gave him less opportunity of interfering with the court. The change,
though it brought promotion in dignity, caused a diminution of income as
well as of power; but Coke received some compensation in being appointed
a member of the privy council. The independence of his conduct as a
judge, though not unmixed with the baser elements of prejudice and
vulgar love of authority, has partly earned forgiveness for the
harshness which was so prominent in his sturdy character. Full of an
extreme reverence for the common law which he knew so well, he defended
it alike against the court of chancery, the ecclesiastical courts, and
the royal prerogative. In a narrow spirit, and strongly influenced, no
doubt, by his enmity to the chancellor, Thomas Egerton (Lord Brackley),
he sought to prevent the interference of the court of chancery with even
the unjust decisions of the other courts. In the case of an appeal from
a sentence given in the king's bench, he advised the victorious, but
guilty, party to bring an action of praemunire against all those who had
been concerned in the appeal, and his authority was stretched to the
utmost to obtain the verdict he desired. On the other hand, Coke has the
credit of having repeatedly braved the anger of the king. He freely gave
his opinion that the royal proclamation cannot make that an offence
which was not an offence before. An equally famous but less satisfactory
instance occurred during the trial of Edmund Peacham, a divine in whose
study a sermon had been found containing libellous accusations against
the king and the government. There was nothing to give colour to the
charge of high treason with which he was charged, and the sermon had
never been preached or published; yet Peacham was put to the torture,
and Bacon was ordered to confer with the judges individually concerning
the matter. Coke declared such conference to be illegal, and refused to
give an opinion, except in writing, and even then he seems to have said
nothing decided. But the most remarkable case of all occurred in the
next year (1616). A trial was held before Coke in wh