Sir Edward Coke - Lord Coke, his contemporaries called him - was Queen Elizabeth's Attorney General and Chief Justice under James, first Stuart King of England ... Coke's life covered a long span, a wide arc of time; with him the Middle Ages ended and today began. Coke was English law personified. ... Sir Edward Coke never set foot on American soil. Yet no United States citizen can read his story without a sense of immediate recognition. In these parliamentary struggles, knights, citizens and burgesses fought not for themselves alone but for states as yet unformed: Pennsylvania, Virginia, California. In Westminster courtroom battles over procedure, jurisdiction, "right reason and the common law," constitutional government found its way to birth. When the time came we changed the face of this English constitution; amid the sound of guns we repudiated what we hated, adapted what we liked. Yet the heritage endured. -- PREFACE.

Originally published: New ed. / by John Henry Thomas, ... John Farquhar Fraser. London: J. Butterworth & Sons, 1826. New introd. by Stephen Sheppard.

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