The works of Sir Edward Coke have been long familiar to the legal profession; to no English lawyer, indeed, are his gigantic labours unknown. But with regard to the life of their great author, with the exception of the able notice by Oldys, in the Biographia Britannica, little has yet been accomplished. To the readers of English history, Coke is principally known as the pleader who so rancorously conducted the prosecution of Sir Walter Raleigh; and he is hardly remembered for anything except the part which he played in that melancholy trial. To this, many circumstances have contributed; he was much too independent in his political conduct to be a favourite with the historians of either party; too patriotic for the royalists; his high prerogative legal opinions were, on the other hand, equally distasteful to the republicans.