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Indiana University Studies 
that a subject could not so consent, and an obsequious jury 
found him guilty of treason and he was beheaded. 
Period of Equity. The Period of Equity was rich in the 
names of great lawyers. This period was as brilliant as the 
Strict Period for the most part had been dull. Among those 
who should be named for their great attainments are Coke 
and Bacon, whose work fell partly in the Strict Period and 
partly in the Period of Equity; Hale, Rolle, Nottingham, 
Clarendon, Vaughan, Somers, Holt, Talbot, Hardwicke, Lord 
Mansfield, Thurlow, and Blackstone. There were some law- 
yers in this period so bad that they should be mentioned for 
their meanness. Chief of these were Scroggs and Jeffreys. 
Coke (1551-1633). One of the most famous of the common 
law lawyers was Edward Coke. Intellectually he belonged 
with the lawyers of the Strict Period, and his work as a prac- 
titioner occurred in that period. His father died when he 
was ten, and his mother when he was eighteen. His career 
went thru the usual stages of a prominent English lawyer. 
He attended Trinity College, Cambridge; was a student at 
Clifford’s Inn and the Inner Temple; within a year after his 
call to the bar was made a reader at Lyons Inn ; soon he was 
engaged in almost all the prominent cases; became recorder 
of Coventry and London; became solicitor-general, reader on 
the Statute of Uses at his Inn ; treasurer of his Inn ; speaker 
of Parliament; attorney-general; chief justice of the Com- 
mon Pleas (1606) ; and chief justice of the King’s Bench 
(1613). Coke acquired a fortune of £30,000 on his first mar- 
riage, and five months after the death of his first wife mar- 
ried Lady Hatton over his rival, Francis Bacon. This perhaps 
was the beginning of the bitter and jealous enmity of Coke 
and Bacon. At any rate, they were life-long rivals and ene- 
mies. Coke prosecuted Sir Walter Raleigh in a brutal and 
disgusting manner, and also the conspirators in the gun- 
powder plot, and before he became judge generally tried to 
out-Bacon Bacon in flattery of the king; but after he became 
judge he became independent, asserted the independence of a 
judge, and opposed the king, giving an opinion in opposition 
to the Council that the king could not create a new offense. 
He was promoted to the chief justiceship of the King’s Bench 
on Bacon’s suggestion to further Bacon’s ambitions. Coke 
resisted the power of the Court of Chancery presided over by 
