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.

It is unnecessary to sing the praises of Coke's Reports as sources of law and history. For all their quaint defects they ‘will last to be admired by the judicious posterity whilst fame hath a trumpet left her, and any breath to blow therein’. In view of their undiminished importance, the almost complete absence of original textual studies is somewhat remarkable. In the latest edition of the Reports, published as long ago as 1826, Mr J. H. Thomas attempted to sever the personal comment and digression from the actual resolutions of the courts; but his only guide was his own instinct, corroborated where possible from other contemporary reports.