all mankind is unparalleled."

Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, Coke, as Attorney-General,
had had another task well suited to his taste, that of examining the
prisoners stretched on the rack, at the Tower. Volumes of examinations
of prisoners under torture, in Coke's own handwriting, are still
preserved at the State Paper Office, which, says Campbell,
"sufficiently attest his zeal, assiduity and hard-heartedness in the
service.... He scrupulously attended to see the proper degree of pain
inflicted." Yet this severe prosecutor, bitter advocate and cruel
examiner, became a Chief Justice of tolerable courtesy, moderate
severity, and unimpeachable integrity.

If he had everything his own way in the criminal court and the torture
chamber, Coke did not find his wishes altogether unopposed in his
family. To begin with, he suffered the perpetual insult of the refusal
on the part of his wife to be called by his name. If her first husband
had been of higher rank, it might have been another matter: but both
were only knights, and it was a parallel case to the widow Jones,
after she had married Smith, insisting upon still calling herself Mrs.
Jones. Lady Elizabeth defended her conduct on this point as
follows:[3] "I returned this answer: that if Sir Edward Cooke would
bury my first husband accordinge to his own directions, and also paie
such small legacys as he gave to divers of his friends, in all cominge
not to above £700 or £900, at the most that was left unperformed, he
having all Sir William Hatton's goods & lands to a large proportion,
then would I willingly stile myself by his name. But he never yielded,
so I consented not to the other." Whether Hatton or Coke, as an Earl's
daughter she was Lady Elizabeth, by which name alone let us know her.