Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION. lxix
" Sir Edward Coke died this year also, who was of greater reputation
with the people, but of less at Court : whose illegal actions he earnestly opposed
in parliament, being usually chosen a member of the house of commons after
he was put off his public offices. He was a man of great learning and
industry, and had the value of a just and impartial magistrate."
Sir Julius Cxsar, Master of the Rolls, his old friend and colleague
at the Inner Temple, where they had sat together as benchers and
shared in the business of the society for many years, was then seventyseven
years of age. Like Sir Edward Coke, he had during his life
made assurances in favour of his children, and he gave a similar
direction in his will that " all manner of superfluities " should he
avoided at his funeral. He survived Sir Edward but a short time,
dying on the t8th April, 1636, aged seventy-nine. He thus speaks
of his old friend :1
" September 3rd 1634, died at his house at Stoke in Bucks mine old
friend and fellow bencher Sir Edward Coke, Knt., being Wednesday, between
eleven and twelve of the clock at night, in his bed, quietly, like a lambe,
without any groans or outward signs of sickness, but only spent by age, being
at his death eighty seven years and seven months old : of the most famous
memorie ; a generall good scholar ; and the most skilfull in the common lawe
of England of any man in his time, or before him for the space of three
hundred yeares at least, as may appear by his Book of Reports, and his Commentaries
upon Lyttleton."
Nearly thirty years after Coke's death, when Charles II. was
settled on the throne, Anne Sadler, Coke's eldest daughter, she being
then seventy-six years of age, widow of Ralph Sadler, of Standon,
Hertfordshire, sent to the inn, by the hands of one of her gentlemen, a
great number of her father's books, with a list which is still preserved
in the library. Some of these are of a devotional, others of a controversial
character, and many are annotated by Sir Edward Coke in his
own hand. Most of them are still to be found in the library, but except
for the interest attaching to them as having been the property of the
Lord Chief Justice they are seldom taken from the shelf. She also
sent two pictures. These are not actually identified in the gift, but
there is little doubt that they are those of Sir Edward Coke in the
robes of a Lord Chief Justice, by Van Somer, and Sir Thomas
" Life of Sir Julius Cwsar, K', with Memoirs of his Family," by Edrn. Lodge,
Norroy King of Arms, London, 1827, p. 32.