Ed Coke

Devereux immediately began plotting rebellion. Orders were sent out for "bedding" and "draperies" – codenames for weapons – and rebellious gentlemen gathered at Essex House to hear him talk of Elizabeth's "crooked mind and crooked carcass". In response, Coke and Cecil began a counter-plot. In 1599 Sir John Hayward had written and published The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie IV, dedicating it to Devereux. Elizabeth, furious, had banned the book, suggesting that it was a "seditious prelude" intended to show her as a corrupt and poor monarch. Against the backdrop of Devereux's plot, Coke and Cecil started a new investigation into the book, hoping to prove some involvement of Devereux in the publishing. Coke interviewed Hayward's licensing cleric, Samuel Harsnett, who complained that the dedication had been "foisted" on him by Devereux. In reaction, Coke decided to bring charges of treason against Devereux, saying that he had "plotted and practised with the Pope and king of Spain for the deposing and selling of himself as well as the crown of England ... His permitting underhand that treasonable book of Henry IV to be printed and published; it being plainly deciphered, not only by the matter, and by the epistle itself, for what end and for whose behalf it was made, but also the Earl himself being present so often at the playing thereof, and with great applause giving countenance to it".

He was an actor, known for Sagebrush Serenade (1939).

Coke's challenge to the ecclesiastical courts and their ex officio oath is seen as the origin of the right to silence. With his decision that common law courts could issue writs of prohibition against such oaths and his arguments that such oaths were contrary to the common law (as found in his Reports and Institutes), Coke "dealt the crucial blow to the oath ex officio and to the High Commission". The case of John Lilburne later confirmed that not only was such an oath invalid, but that there was a right to silence, drawing from Coke's decisions in reaching that conclusion. In the trial of Sir Roger Casement for treason in 1916, Coke's assertion that treason is defined as "giving aide and comfort to the King's enemies within the realme or without" was the deciding factor in finding him guilty. His work in Slade's Case led to the rise of modern contract law, and his actions in the Case of Proclamations and the other pleadings which led to his eventual dismissal went some way towards securing judicial independence. The Statute of Monopolies, the foundation for which was laid by Coke and which was drafted by him, is considered one of the first steps towards the eventual English Civil War, and also "one of the landmarks in the transition of [England's] economy from the feudal to the capitalist". The legal precept that no one may enter a home unless by invitation, was established as common law in Coke’s Institutes. "For a man's house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man's home is his safest refuge]." It is the origin of the famous dictum, “an Englishman’s home is his castle”.

Ed Coke was born on September 29, 1913 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA as Henry Edward Coke.

Part one, the Commentary upon Littleton, was undoubtedly the most famous; copies were exported to the United States early in the colonial era. The work was first printed in an American edition in 1812, by which point the English version was in its sixteenth edition, and had been commented on itself by various later legal authorities. As with the Reports, Coke's Institutes became a standard textbook in the United States, and was recorded in the law libraries of Harvard College in 1723 and Brown University in 1770; John Jay, John Adams, Theophilus Parsons and Thomas Jefferson were all influenced by it. John Rutledge later wrote that "Coke's Institutes seems to be almost the foundations of our law", while Jefferson stated that "a sounder Whig never wrote more profound learning in the orthodox doctrine of British liberties". The Third Institutes has been described as "the first really adequate discussion of treason, a work which went far towards offering the remedy of a humanized common law to the injustices of trial procedures".

Coke is best known in modern times for his Institutes, described by John Rutledge as "almost the foundations of our law", and his Reports, which have been called "perhaps the single most influential series of named reports". Historically, he was a highly influential judge; within England and Wales, his statements and works were used to justify the right to silence, while the Statute of Monopolies is considered to be one of the first actions in the conflict between Parliament and monarch that led to the English Civil War. In America, Coke's decision in Dr. Bonham's Case was used to justify the voiding of both the Stamp Act 1765 and writs of assistance, which led to the American War of Independence; after the establishment of the United States his decisions and writings profoundly influenced the Third and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution while necessitating the Sixteenth.

Coke was buried beside his first wife, who was called his "first and best wife" by his daughter Anne; his second wife died in 1646. Coke had two children with his second wife, both daughters: Elizabeth and Frances Coke, Viscountess Purbeck. Frances married John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck, but left him soon afterwards for her lover Sir Robert Howard, with whom she lived for many years, to the great scandal of the Court.

Coke died on 3 September 1634, aged 82, and lay in state for a month at his home in Godwick to allow for friends and relatives to view the body. He was buried in St Mary's Church, Tittleshall, Norfolk. His grave is covered by a marble monument with his effigy lying on it in full judicial robes, surrounded by eight shields holding his coat of arms. A Latin inscription on the monument identifies him as "Father of twelve children and thirteen books". A second inscription, in English, gives a brief chronicle of his life and ends by stating that "His laste wordes [were] thy kingdome come, thye will be done. Learne, reader to live so, that thou may'st so die". Coke's estates passed to his son Henry.

When Parliament was dissolved in 1629, Charles decided to govern without one, and Coke retired to his estate at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, about 20 miles west of London, spending his time making revisions to his written works. He made no attempt to return to politics, stating that the Petition of Right would be left as his "greatest inheritance"; his desire to complete his writings, coupled with his advanced age, may also have been factors. Despite his age, Coke was still in good health, and exercised daily. Following an accident in which his horse fell on him, he refused to consult doctors, saying that he had "a disease which all the drugs of Asia, the gold of Africa, nor all the doctors of Europe could cure – old age", and instead chose to remain confined to the house without medical treatment. As he was on his deathbed the Privy Council ordered that his house and chambers be searched, seizing 50 manuscripts, which were later restored; his will was permanently lost.

Coke undertook the central role in framing and writing the Petition of Right. The ongoing struggles over martial law and civil liberties, along with the rejection of the Resolutions seriously concerned the Commons. Accordingly, Coke convinced the Lords to meet with the Commons in April 1628 in order to discuss a petition to the King confirming the rights and liberties of royal subjects. The Commons immediately accepted this, and after a struggle, the Lords agreed to allow a committee chaired by Coke to draft the eventual document. Hearing of this, the King sent a message to Parliament forbidding the Commons from discussing matters of state. The resulting debate led to some MPs being unable to speak due to their fear that the King was threatening them with the destruction of Parliament. Coke, despite the fear in Parliament, stood and spoke, citing historical precedents supporting the principle that members of the Commons could, within Parliament, say whatever they wished – something now codified as Parliamentary privilege.

James died on 27 March 1625 and was succeeded by his son, who became Charles I of England. Coke was made High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire by the king in 1625, which prohibited him from sitting in Parliament until his term expired a year later. Following his father's example, Charles raised loans without Parliament's sanction and imprisoned without trial those who would not pay. The judges of the Court of Common Pleas and King's Bench declared this to be illegal, and the Chief Justice Sir Ranulph Crewe was dismissed; at this, the remaining judges succumbed to the king's pressure. More and more people refused to pay, leading to Darnell's Case, in which the courts confirmed that "if no cause was given for the detention ... the prisoner could not be freed as the offence was probably too dangerous for public discussion". The result of this was that wealthy landowners refused to pay the loan and the Crown's income fell below Charles's expectations, forcing him to call a fresh Parliament in March 1627. With popular anger at Charles's policies, many MPs were opposed to him, including Pym, Coke and a young Oliver Cromwell.

Over time, this system became more and more problematic; instead of temporary monopolies on specific, imported industries, long-term monopolies came about over more common commodities, including salt and starch. These monopolies led to a showdown between the Crown and Parliament, in which it was agreed in 1601 to turn the power to administer patents over to the common law courts; at the same time, Elizabeth revoked a number of the more restrictive and damaging monopolies. Even given a string of judicial decisions criticising and overruling such monopolies, James I, when he took the throne, continued using patents to create monopolies. Coke used his position in Parliament to attack these patents, which were, according to him, "now grown like hydras' heads; they grow up as fast as they are cut off". Coke succeeded in establishing the Committee of Grievances, a body chaired by him that abolished a large number of monopolies. This was followed by a wave of protest at the patent system. On 27 March 1621, James suggested the House of Commons draw up a list of the three most objectionable patents, and he would remove them, but by this time a statute was already being prepared by Coke. After passing on 12 May it was thrown out by the House of Lords, but a Statute of Monopolies was finally passed by Parliament on 25 May 1624.

Now out of favour and with no chance of returning to the judiciary, Coke was re-elected to Parliament as an MP, ironically by order of the King, who expected Coke to support his efforts. Elected in 1620, Coke sat for Liskeard in the 1621 Parliament, which was called by the King to raise revenues; other topics of discussion included a proposed marriage between the Prince of Wales and Maria Anna of Spain, and possible military support for the King's son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Coke became a leading opposition MP, along with Robert Phelips, Thomas Wentworth and John Pym, campaigning against any military intervention and the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Maria Anna. His position at the head of the opposition was unsurprising given his extensive experience in both local and central government, as well as his ability to speak with authority on matters of economics, parliamentary procedure and the law. He subsequently sat as MP for Coventry (1624), Norfolk (1625) and Buckinghamshire (1628).

This was the last straw; on advice from Bacon, who had long been jealous of Coke, James I suspended Coke from the Privy Council, forbade him from going on circuit and, on 14 November, dismissed him from his post as Chief Justice of the King's Bench. This was greeted by deep resentment in the country, which saw the King's actions as tampering with justice. Coke himself reacted by sinking into a deep depression. James I then ordered Coke to spend his time "expunging and retracting such novelties and errors and offensive conceits as are dispersed in his Reports". Bacon, now in royal favour, became Lord Chancellor on 3 March 1617 and set up a commission to purge the Reports, also using his authority to expand the powers of the High Commission. With James unable to declare Coke incompetent, some of what Humphry William Woolrych describes as "colorable excuses" were produced to justify Coke's dismissal; he was accused of concealing £12,000, uttering "high words of contempt" as a judge, and declaring himself Chief Justice of England.

As Chief Justice, Coke restricted the use of the ex officio (Star Chamber) oath and, in the Case of Proclamations and Dr. Bonham's Case, declared the King to be subject to the law, and the laws of Parliament to be void if in violation of "common right and reason". These actions eventually led to his transfer to the Chief Justiceship of the King's Bench, where it was felt he could do less damage. Coke then successively restricted the definition of treason and declared a royal letter illegal, leading to his dismissal from the bench on 14 November 1616. With no chance of regaining his judicial posts, he instead returned to Parliament, where he swiftly became a leading member of the opposition. During his time as a Member of Parliament he wrote and campaigned for the Statute of Monopolies, which substantially restricted the ability of the monarch to grant patents, and authored and was instrumental in the passage of the Petition of Right, a document considered one of the three crucial constitutional documents of England, along with Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689.

Coke made a fortune from purchasing estates with clouded titles at a discount, whereupon, through his knowledge of the intricacies of property law, he would clear the titles on the acquired properties to his favour. About the year 1615, his amassed property acquisitions attracted the attention of the government. James I claimed that Coke "had already as much land as it was proper a subject should possess." The story goes that Coke requested the King's permission to just "add one acre more" to his holdings, and upon approval proceeded to purchase the fine estate of Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk, one of the most expensive "acres" in the land.

In June 1614, the University of Cambridge by unanimous vote elected Coke High Steward, an honorary office immediately below Chancellor of the University. Through Cecil, (previously High Steward and then Chancellor of Cambridge), Coke had procured for the university the right to send its own two representatives to Parliament, a matter of much practical benefit. A fervent Cantabrigian, Coke had a habit of naming Cambridge first, including in Parliament. When reminded that precedence belonged to Oxford "by vote of the House," Coke persisted in giving Cambridge primacy. A Privy Councilor, Sir Thomas Edmondes, interrupted with a rebuke. It was reported that Coke suggested Edmondes not bother worrying about the primacy of Oxford or Cambridge, given that he had not attended either university.

Coke was transferred from the Common Pleas, where he was succeeded by Hobart, to the Court of King's Bench on 25 October 1613, on the advice of Bacon, presumably because Bacon and the King felt that if he was moved from a court dedicated to protecting the rights of the people to one dedicated to the rights of the King, "his capacity for harm would be diminished". From Bacon's point of view, the King's Bench was a far more precarious position for someone loyal to the common law rather than the monarch. Coke's first case of note there was Peacham's Case, in which he dictated that the writing of a sermon by the Puritan clergyman Edmund Peacham which advocated the death of the king – a sermon which was never preached or published – could not constitute treason. The King was unwilling to accept this decision and instead had him tried by Coke's opponents on the bench, who "not surprisingly" found him guilty, although his life was spared. Refusing to admit his guilt, Peacham was tortured on the rack, but "before torture, between torture and after torture; nothing could be drawn from him".

During this period a "notorious suit" ran through the courts, known as Fuller's Case after the defendant, Nicholas Fuller. A barrister, Fuller had several clients fined by the High Commission for non-conformity, and stated that the High Commission's procedure was "popish, under jurisdiction not of Christ but of anti-Christ". For this, Fuller was held in custody for contempt of court. The Court of King's Bench argued that this was a lay matter, while the High Commission claimed it fell under their jurisdiction. Coke had no official role, other than acting as a mediator between the two, but in the end Fuller was convicted by the High Commission. This was a defeat for the common law, and in response Coke spent the summer issuing writs of prohibition to again challenge Bancroft and the High Commission. On 6 November 1608, the common law judges and members of the High Commission were summoned before the king and told that they would argue and allow him to decide. Finding themselves unable to even argue coherently, instead "[standing] sullen, merely denying each others' statements", the group was dismissed and reconvened a week later. Coke, speaking for the judges, argued that the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was limited to cases where no temporal matters were involved and the rest left to the common law.

In 1606 Coke reported the Star Chamber case De Libellis Famosis, which ruled that truth was not a defence against an accusation of seditious libel, and also held that ordinary common law courts could enforce this, a doctrine which thus outlived the Star Chamber after its abolition in 1642.

The next significant government prosecution was the trial of the eight main Gunpowder Plot conspirators in Westminster Hall. The men were indicted on 27 January 1605 and tried by the Lords Commissioners. Coke conducted the prosecution for the government – an easy one, since the conspirators had no legal representation – and through his speeches, "blacken[ed] them in the eyes of the world". The conspirators were all sentenced to death and died through various means. Due to his judicial appointment, this was the last important prosecution Coke participated in.

Coke's changed position from Attorney General to Chief Justice allowed him to openly attack organisations he had previously supported. His first target was the Court of High Commission, an ecclesiastical court established by the monarch with near unlimited power; it administered a mandatory ex officio oath that deliberately trapped people. The High Commission was vastly unpopular among both common lawyers and Members of Parliament, as the idea of "prerogative law" challenged both authorities. The appointment of Richard Bancroft as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1604 caused the issue to grow in importance; according to P.B. Waite, a Canadian historian, Bancroft's zeal and strictness "could hardly fail to produce an atmosphere in which principles and issues would crystallize, in which logic would supplant reasonableness". The judges, particularly Coke, began to unite with Parliament in challenging the High Commission. In 1607 Parliament openly asked for Coke's opinion on the High Commission's practices; he replied that "No man ecclesiastical or temporal shall be examined upon secret thoughts of his heart or of his secret opinion".

On 24 March 1603, Elizabeth I died. James VI of Scotland set out to claim the English throne, taking the title James I, and the Cokes immediately began ingratiating themselves with the new monarch and his family. Elizabeth Hatton, Coke's wife, travelled to Scotland to meet Anne of Denmark, the incoming Queen, and "the high-tempered beauty somehow pleased that withdrawn, strong-willed woman ... for as long as Anna lived ... Lady Hatton and her husband would retain the queen's affection and trust". Coke attended divine service with the new king on 22 May, who, following the service, took a sword from his bodyguard and knighted Coke. Coke was reconfirmed as Attorney General under James, and immediately found himself dealing with "a series of treasons, whether real or imaginary". The first of these was the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh; according to Cuthbert William Johnson, one of Coke's biographers, "There is, perhaps, no reported case in which the proofs against the prisoner were weaker than in this trial ... never was an accused person condemned on slighter grounds".

In 1602 he bought Minster Lovell, an Oxfordshire 15th-century manor house which had previously belonged to the Lovell family before it was forfeited to the state in 1485.

The charges were never brought because of an incident that soon transpired. On 8 February 1601 Devereux ordered his followers to meet at Essex House. A day later a group of emissaries led by Thomas Egerton and John Popham were sent to Devereux, and immediately taken hostage. After a failed attempt to garner support from the population of London, Devereux found himself surrounded in Essex House; after burning his personal papers, he surrendered. On 19 February he was tried for treason, along with the Earl of Southampton. Coke led the case for the government, and Devereux was found guilty and executed; the Earl of Southampton was reprieved.

Coke primarily dealt with matters of treason, such as the cases of Sir John Smythe and Edward Squire. He also handled religious incidents such as the disputes between the Jesuits and the Church of England, personally interrogating John Gerard after his capture. As the 1590s continued, the infighting between Cecil and Devereux persisted, with Devereux's raid on Cadiz earning him national fame. In March 1599 Devereux was sent to defeat the growing rebellion in Ireland and was given command of 18,000 men, but by November his army was reduced to 4,000, the rest "frittered away" in exchange for "[conquering] nothing". On 5 June 1600 he faced a panel of Privy Councillors, judges and members of the nobility at York House, where he was charged with appointing generals without the Queen's permission, ignoring orders and negotiating "very basely" with the leader of the rebel forces. While the members of the nobility wished to be gentle with Devereux, the lawyers and judges felt differently, recommending fines and confinement in the Tower of London. In the end a compromise was reached, with Devereux put under house arrest and dismissed from all his government offices.

Following his first wife's death in 1598, Coke married Elizabeth Hatton, a desirable marriage due to her wealth; when he found out that Bacon was also pursuing her hand, Coke acted with all speed to complete the ceremony. It was held at a private house at the wrong time, rather than at a church between 8 and 12 in the morning; all involved parties were prosecuted for breaching ecclesiastical law, and Coke had to beg for a pardon. It is said that Coke first suggested marrying Hatton to Sir Robert Cecil, Hatton's uncle, at the funeral of Lord Burghley, Coke's patron; he needed to ensure that he would continue his rise under Burghley's son, Cecil, and did this by marrying into the family. Hatton was 26 years younger than Coke, hot-tempered and articulate; Boyer wrote that "if she and Coke were not compatible, at least they were well-matched". Their marriage having broken down in 1604, Hatton went on to become a formidable protagonist and thorn in his side. At his funeral she remarked "We shall never see his like again, thanks be to God".

On 10 April 1594, Coke was made Attorney General for England and Wales thanks to his partnership with the Cecil family. Francis Bacon, his rival, was supported by Robert Devereux, who waged a constant war against Robert Cecil for control of the English government. The position of Master of the Rolls had become vacant in April 1593, and Coke was expected to be appointed according to convention; Bacon, therefore, would become Attorney General. Coke reacted by becoming even more dogmatic in his actions on behalf of the Crown, and when Devereux approached the queen on Bacon's behalf, she replied that even Bacon's uncle [Lord Burghley] considered him the second best candidate, after Coke. The Attorney General was the main prosecutor of the Crown, expected to bring all charges on its behalf and serve as its legal advisor in any situation. Coke was appointed in a time of particular difficulty; besides famine and the conflict with Spain, war had recently broken out in Ireland.

Coke held the position only briefly; by the time he returned from a tour of Norfolk to discuss election strategy, he had been confirmed as Speaker of the House of Commons by the Privy Council, having been proposed by Francis Knollys and Thomas Heneage following his return to Parliament as MP for Norfolk. Coke held the positions of Speaker and Solicitor-General at the same time, although he did not take up his post as Speaker until the state opening of Parliament on 19 February 1593 (despite being confirmed on 28 January 1593). After "disabling" himself in the House of Lords (a ceremony in which the incoming Speaker apologised for his failings) Parliament was suspended until 24 February; Coke returned two days later, having suffered from a stomach problem. The Parliament was intended to be a brief and simple one; with the Black Death resurgent throughout England and the threat of Spain on the horizon, the only matter was to impose certain taxes to fund the Queen's campaign against the Spanish, with no bills to be introduced. The taxes were paramount; subsidies collected in 1589 had been spent, and the war continued.

The political "old guard" began to change around the time Coke became a Member of Parliament. The Earl of Leicester died in 1588, followed by Sir Walter Mildmay, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a year later, and Sir Francis Walshingham a year after that. In 1592 the Lord Chief Justice died and, according to custom the Attorney General, John Popham, succeeded him, with the Solicitor General, Thomas Egerton, succeeding Popham. This created a vacancy among the Law Officers of the Crown, and thanks to the influence of the Cecil family, Coke became Solicitor General on 16 June 1592. This was likely a narrow victory owing to Coke's defence of unpopular clients; he was summoned before Elizabeth I, who berated him until he cried before confirming him as Solicitor General.

Thanks to his work in their behalf, Coke had earned the favour of the Dukes of Norfolk. When he secured the Lordship of Aldeburgh for them in 1588 he also obtained the Aldeburgh parliamentary constituency, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs). With their support, Coke was returned for Aldeburgh as an MP in February 1589.

Coke's first judicial postings came under Elizabeth; in 1585, he was made Recorder of Coventry, in 1587 Norwich, and in 1592 Recorder of London, a position he resigned upon his appointment as Solicitor General.

On 13 August 1582 Coke married Bridget, the daughter of John Paston, a Counsellor from Norwich. Paston came from a long line of lawyers and judges – his great grandfather, William Paston, was a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Having grown up nearby Coke knew the family, and asked for Bridget's hand immediately after she turned eighteen. At the time he was a thirty-one-year-old barrister with a strong practice, and her father had no qualms about accepting his offer. Six months after they married John Paston died, leaving his daughter and son-in-law his entire estate and several of his clients. Bridget maintained a diary, which reveals that she mainly ran the household. Despite this she was an independent woman, travelling without her husband and acting as a helpmate to Coke. Bridget was noted by Woolrych as an "incomparable" woman who had "inestimable value clearly manifested by the eulogies which are lavished on her character". The couple settled at the manor of Huntingfield, described by Catherine Drinker Bowen as "enchanting, with a legend for every turret ... A splendid gallery ran the length of the house, the Great Hall was built around six massive oaks which supported the roof as they grew".

Coke became involved in the now classic Shelley's Case in 1581, which created a rule in real property that is still used in some common law jurisdictions today; the case also established Coke's reputation as an attorney and case reporter. His next famous case was Chudleigh's Case, a dispute over the interpretation of the Statute of Uses, followed by Slade's Case, a dispute between the Common Pleas and King's Bench over assumpsit now regarded as a classic example of the friction between the two courts and the forward movement of contract law; Coke's argument in Slade's Case formed the first definition of consideration.

During the 1580s, Coke became intimately linked with the Howard family, the Dukes of Norfolk and Earls of Arundel. His uncle Thomas Gawdy had close links to Earl Arundel himself. In Norfolk Arundel held a liberty – he was essentially a local prince who appointed all officials, maintained his own prison, executed justice and bribed any royal clerks. His power base was his household, particularly the network of lawyers and stewards who held his estates together. Coke's uncle Thomas Gawdy had served as Steward to the Third Duke of Norfolk, and during the 1580s Coke was employed by the Howards to counter lawyers employed by the Crown, who argued that the Howards' lands were forfeit owing to the treason of the 4th Duke. As well as defeating these direct attacks Coke traveled to Cardiff to answer a challenge by Francis Dacre, son of William Dacre, 3rd Baron Dacre and uncle-in-law to the 4th Duke's three sons, Philip Howard and his two half-brothers, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk and Lord William Howard – he proved that Dacre's evidence was false and had the case dismissed.

Born into an upper-class family, Coke was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to study at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the Bar on 20 April 1578. As a barrister he took part in several notable cases, including Slade's Case, before earning enough political favour to be elected to Parliament, where he served first as Solicitor General and then as Speaker of the House of Commons. Following a promotion to Attorney General he led the prosecution in several notable cases, including those against Robert Devereux, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. As a reward for his services he was first knighted and then made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

After leaving Trinity College he travelled to London, where he became a member of Clifford's Inn in 1571. This was to learn the basics of the law – the Inns of Chancery, including Clifford's Inn, provided initial legal education before transfer to the Inns of Court, where one could be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister. Students were educated through arguments and debates – they would be given precedents and writs each day, discuss them at the dinner table and then argue a moot court based on those precedents and their discussions. Coke also studied various writs "till they turned honey sweet on his tongue", and after completing this stage of his legal education transferred to the Inner Temple on 24 April 1572.

After leaving Norwich in 1567 he matriculated to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied for three years until the end of 1570, when he left without gaining a degree. Little is known of his time at Trinity, though he certainly studied rhetoric and dialectics under a program instituted in 1559. His biographers felt he had all the intelligence to be a good student, though a record of his academic achievements has not been found. Coke was proud of Cambridge and the time he spent there, later saying in Dr. Bonham's Case that Cambridge and Oxford were "the eyes and soul of the realm, from whence religion, the humanities, and learning were richly diffused into all parts of the realm."

Coke used his role in Parliament as a leading opposition MP to attack patents, a system he had already criticised as a judge. Historically, English patent law was based on custom and the common law, not on statute. It began as the Crown granted patents as a form of economic protection to ensure high industrial production. As gifts from the Crown, there was no judicial review, oversight or consideration, and no actual law concerning patents. To boost England's economy, Edward II began encouraging foreign workmen and inventors to settle in England, offering letters of protection that protected them from guild policy on the condition that they train English apprentices and pass on their knowledge. The letters did not grant a full monopoly; rather they acted as a passport, allowing foreign workers to travel to England and practice their trade. This process continued for three centuries, with formal procedures set out in 1561 to issue letters patent to any new industry, allowing monopolies. The granting of these patents was highly popular with the monarch because of the potential for raising revenue; a patentee was expected to pay heavily for the patent, and unlike a tax raise (another method of raising Crown money) any public unrest as a result of the patent was normally directed at the patentee, not the monarch.

At the age of eight in 1560, Coke began studying at the Norwich Free Grammar School. The education there was based on erudition, the eventual goal being that by the age of 18 the students would have learned "to vary one sentence diversely, to make a verse exactly, to endight an epistle eloquently and learnedly, to declaim of a theme simple, and last of all to attain some competent knowledge of the Greek tongue". The students were taught rhetoric based on the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and Greek centred on the works of Homer and Virgil. Coke was taught at Norwich to value the "forcefulness of freedom of speech", something he later applied as a judge. Some accounts relate that he was a diligent student who applied himself well.

Sir Edward Coke SL (/k ʊ k / "cook", formerly /k uː k / ; 1 February 1552 – 3 September 1634) was an English barrister, judge, and politician who is considered to be the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras.