Footnotes

• Bone's pencil drawing, squared for transfer is in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG D17128), acquired by Sir George Scharf in 1890, the preliminary work is dated November 1812. The author of the prototype for the present portrait is unknown, but from Bone's drawing and inscription on the present lot, it is known that the original portrait was in the ownership of Norwich Town Hall in the early 19th Century.
  
  Edward Coke was educated at Norwich Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge. When he was 30, he married Bridget Paston, who descended from a wealthy Suffolk family and came with a dowry of £30,000. He developed ties with Lord Burghley, and after a succession of minor positions, he was appointed Solicitor General by Elizabeth I in 1592. She named him speaker of the House of Commons the following year, and in 1594 chose him over Francis Bacon to be attorney general.
  
  As Attorney General he conducted several trials of treason, prosecuting the Earls of Essex and Southampton, Sir Walter Raleigh and the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. When his wife died, he soon remarried Elizabeth Cecil, widow of Sir William Newport of Holdenby (nephew and heir of Christopher Hatton); granddaughter of Lord Burghley and niece of Robert Cecil, the most influential minister of the Queen and, for a while, of her successor, James I.
  
  Coke was made Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He was a champion of Common Law and held the belief that it was the supreme law and far more powerful than the King, which upset James I. He upset James again when he stated that 'the King cannot change any part of the common law nor create any offence by proclamation which was not an offence before'. James appointed Coke Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, believing that he would be bound to look after the King's interests, but Coke continued to maintain the supremacy of the common law, and continued to upset the King. The Privy Council, supported by Francis Bacon, brought several charges against Coke and on 14 November 1616 he was dismissed. In order to regain influence, he offered his daughter in marriage to Sir John Villiers, the brother of the Duke of Buckingham. His wife, supported by Bacon, hid the 14-year-old girl, but Coke abducted her and had her forcibly married to Villiers.
  
  By 1617 Coke was back in the Privy Council and in the Star Chamber. He re-entered Parliament, opposed Prince Charles' proposed marriage to a Spanish princess and took part in drawing up bribery charges against Bacon. He died on 3 September 1634 at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire and all his papers were instantly seized including his will.