When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king’s royal prerogative being unlimited and undefined, “was a great overgrown monster;” and, on one occasion, when Coke said before the king, that “his Majesty was defended by the laws,”—­James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said he was not defended by the laws, but by God (alluding to his “divine right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir Thomas Crompton, a civilian; asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as Coke.  The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the common lawyers.  Coke declared that the common law of England was in imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically described as the perfection of all sense and experience.  Coke was strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the cause is obscure in our history), “charged with speaking so in parliament as tended to stir up the subjects’ hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented:  he acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person, and the integrity of the constitution.  In the same manuscript letter I find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on words,—­the king said, “I will govern according to the good of the common-weal, but not according to the common-will!”

[Footnote A:  The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not been published.  They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times:  on that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the firmness of a great spirit.

Nov. 19, 1616.

“The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him from the very roots.  The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and tears. Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem.  I send you a distich on the Lord Coke—­

  “Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure
  Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis.”

It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being punned on, both in Latin and in English:  for he was lodged in the Tower, in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had written on the door, which he read at his entrance—­

  “This room has long wanted a Cook.”

“The Prince interceding lately for Edward Coke, his Majesty answered, ‘He knew no such man.’  When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. Coke, his Majesty still answered, ’He knew none of that name neither; but he knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction in parliament.’”