Francis Bacon and Edward Coke were the two legal giants of the late 16th and early 17th century. Both achieved high judicial office, Bacon as Lord Chancellor, Coke as Lord Chief Justice, but their views were diametrically opposed on the supremacy of the law and the authority of the Crown. Their conflict is the subject of a recent novel, The Winding Stair, by Jesse Norman, Conservative MP and former minister.
Coke was the legal scholar, wedded to the common law and the primacy of the judges. Bacon had a wider perspective. He favoured the monarchy, which at the time wielded executive authority. For him the judges were ‘lions under the throne’—powerful but subordinate. Parliament only attained its modern status after the ‘glorious revolution’ of 1689 reduced the Crown to a secondary and ultimately nominal role in government. With that difference the current tension between government and the judges parallels its precursor almost half a millennium ago.
Presenting his account as fiction frees
