CHIEF JUSTICE COKE. 343 



cases : that heretofore in other &quot; Reports,&quot; as namely, 

 those of Mr. Plowden *, which he reverenced much, 

 there hath been found nevertheless errors, which the 

 wisdom of time had discovered, and later judgments 

 controlled ; and enumerated to us four cases in 

 Plowden, which were erroneous : and thereupon 

 delivered in to us the inclosed paper, wherein your 

 majesty may perceive, that my lord is an happy 

 man, that there should be no more errors in his five 

 hundred cases, than in a few cases of Plowden. Your 

 majesty may also perceive, that your majesty s direc 

 tion to my lord chancellor and myself, and the tra 

 vail taken by us and Mr. Solicitor f , in following 

 and performing your direction, was not altogether 

 lost ; for that of those three heads, which we princi 

 pally respected, which were the rights and liberties 

 of the Church, your prerogative, and the jurisdiction 

 of other your courts, my lord hath scarcely fallen 



* Edmund Plowden, born of an ancient family of that name 

 at Plowden in Shropshire, who, as he tells us himself in the 

 preface to his &quot;Reports,&quot; in the twentieth year of B his age, and the 

 thirtieth of the reign of Henry VIII. anno 1539, began his study 

 of the common law in the Middle Temple. Wood adds Ath. 

 Oxon. Vol. I. col. 219, that he spent three years in the study of 

 arts, philosophy, and physic, at Cambridge, and four at Oxford, 

 where in November 1552 he was admitted to practise chirurgery 

 and physic. In 1557 he became summer reader of the Mid 

 dle Temple, and three years after Lent reader, having been 

 made serjeant, October 27, 1558. He died February 6, 1584-5, 

 at the age of sixty-seven, in the profession of the Roman catho 

 lic faith, and lies interred in the Temple church. 



I Sir Henry Yelverton. 



