n of all sense and experience. Coke was
strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length
committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the
cause is obscure in our history), "charged with speaking so in parliament
as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet
in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented: he
acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person,
and the integrity of the constitution. In the same manuscript letter I
find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was
discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the
wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on
words,--the king said, "I will govern according to the good of the
_common-weal_, but not according to the _common-will!_"

[Footnote A: The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not
been published. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times: on
that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the
firmness of a great spirit.

_Nov. 19, 1616._

"The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him
from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George
Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and
tears. _Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem_. I send
you a distich on the Lord Coke--

"Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure
Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis."

It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being
punned on, both in Latin and in English: for he was lodged in the Tower,
in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had
written on the door, which he read at his entrance--

"This room has long wanted a Cook."

"The Prince interceding lately for _Edward Coke_, his Majesty answered,
'He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. Coke,
his Majesty still answered, 'He knew none of that name neither; but he
knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction in
parliament.'"

In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arundel
was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him that
his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned in
the law to advise him for his cause, Coke thanked the king, but he knew