"We must remind ourselves that the weaknesses Coke might have had as a general historian did not prevent his being one of the greatest of English lawyers. If he gave a new turn to the law by what purported to be an appeal to the past, this was itself the mark of a creative mind that was able to achieve practical results by virtue of an added technical ability. He more than anybody else translated medieval limitations upon the monarchy into 17th-century terms; and if he transposed feudal safeguards into common-law restrictions, still his anachronistic sins became a service to the cause of liberty. All that he did helped to confirm the view that in England the king is under the law, and conspired to bring that view of English government to a more complete and vivid realization."
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Politicians from EnglandPolitical leadersNon-fiction authors from EnglandLawyers from EnglandJudges from England
Original Language: English
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Sources
Herbert Butterfield, The Englishman and His History (1944), p. 54
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Coke
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Edward Coke
Sir Edward Coke (1 February 1552 – 3 September 1634) was an English Judge and jurist and later a politician whose writings on the English common law were definitive legal texts for some 300 years.
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