128 ACCOUNT OF COUNCIL BUSINESS, ETC. 



Some two days before 1 had a conference with some judges 

 (not all, but such as I did choose), touching the high com 

 mission, and the extending of the same in some points, 

 which I see I shall be able to dispatch by consent, without 

 his majesty s further trouble. 



I did call upon the committees also for the proceeding 

 in the purging of Sir Edward Coke s Reports, which I see 

 they go on with seriously.* 



Thanks be to God, we have not much to do for matters 

 of counsel; and I see now that his majesty is as well able 

 by his letters to govern England from Scotland, as he was 

 to govern Scotland from England. 



* During the time that my Lord Chief Justice Coke lay under the displeasure 

 of the court, for the reasons I have mentioned in the Discourse preceding these 

 Letters, some information was given to the king, that he, having published eleven 

 books of Reports, had written many things against his majesty s prerogative. 

 And being commanded to explain some of them, my Lord Chancellor Ellesmere 

 doth thereupon, in his letter of 22d of October, 1616, write thus to the king : 

 According to your majesty s directions signified unto me by Mr. Solicitor, I 

 called the lord chief justice before me on Thursday, the 17th instant, in 

 presence of Mr. Attorney and others of your learned counsel. I did let him 

 know your majesty s acceptance of the few animadversions, which upon review of 

 his own labours, he had sent, though fewer than you expected, and his excuses 

 other than you expected. And did at the same time inform him, that his ma 

 jesty was dissatisfied with several other passages therein ; and those not the 

 principal points of the cases judged, but delivered by way of expatiation, and 

 which might hav been omitted without prejudice to the judgment : of which 

 sort the attorney and solicitor general did for the present only select five, which 

 being delivered to the chief justice on the 17th of October, he returns his answers 

 at large upon the 21st of the same month, the which I have seen under his own 

 hand. It is true the lord chancellor wished he might have been spared all 

 service concerning the chief justice, as remembering the fifth petition of dimitte 

 nobis debita nostra, &c. Insomuch that though a committee of judges was ap 

 pointed to consider these books, yet the matter seems to have slept, till after 

 Sir Francis Bacon was made lord keeper, it revived, and two judges more were 

 added to the former. Whereupon Sir Edward Coke doth, by his letter, make 

 his humble suit to the Earl of Buckingham. 1. That if his majesty shall not 

 be satisfied with his former offer, viz. by the advice of the judges, to explain 

 and publish those points, so as no shadow may remain against his prerogative ; 

 that then all the judges of England may be called thereto. 2. That they might 

 certify also what cases he had published for his majesty s prerogative and benefit, 

 for the good of the church and quieting men s inheritances, and good of the 

 commonwealth. But Sir Edward, being then or soon after coming into favour 

 by the marriage of his daughter, I conceive there was no farther proceedings 

 in this affair. It will be needless for me to declare what reputation these books 

 have among the professors of the law ; but I cannot omit upon this occasion to 

 take notice of a character Sir Francis Bacon had some time before given them 

 in his proposition to the king touching the compiling and amendment of the 

 laws of England. &quot; To give every man his due, had it not been for Sir Edward 

 Coke s Reports, which though they may have errors, and some peremptory and 

 extrajudicial resolutions more than are warranted, yet they contain infinite good 

 decisions and rulings over of cases, the law by this time had been almost like a 

 ship without ballast ; for that the cases of modern experience are fled from those 

 that are adjudged and ruled in former time.&quot; 



