Coke's Note-Books and the Sources of his Reports

Abstract

Four hundred years ago this April, Edward Coke of Trinity College, Cambridge, was admitted to the Inner Temple, an event momentous not merely in the history of the Inn but also in the history of the common law. For it was in 1572 that young Coke began to attend the courts and to observe the decisions there, to listen to Bendlowes and Plowden and Dyer as they opened for him the secrets of jurisprudence. He was to continue his attendance at Westminster Hall for forty-four years, and from 1579 to record all the important cases which came to his notice, It is, therefore, an auspicious moment to remember Coke's achievement as a reporter of cases, a matter of particular interest in “that famous University of Cambridge, alma mea mater,” to whose legal offspring Coke's literary works were especially addressed.