Sir Edward Coke

Edward Coke, pronounced Cook, was born in Norfolk, England, studied at Cambridge and trained as a lawyer in London's Inns of Court. He rose quickly, becoming Speaker of the House of Commons and then Attorney General under Elizabeth I, when he prosecuted the Earl of Essex and later Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators with great harshness. As a judge under James I, first Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and then of the King's Bench, he took a different role, insisting that the king himself was under the law. In Dr. Bonham's Case in 1610 he suggested that judges could declare void an act contrary to common right and reason. James dismissed him in 1616. Returning to Parliament, he became a leader of the opposition to royal overreach and in 1628 helped draft the Petition of Right, which declared that the king could not tax without Parliament's consent or imprison people without cause shown. His Reports and Institutes of the Lawes of England were studied by generations of lawyers, including American founders. He died in 1634.

Faith: Faith not well documented; a member of the Church of England. Source: Wikipedia