Thought to have attended
Westminster School, Coke entered
Trinity College, Cambridge in 1576, where he remained for the next fifteen years, serving as a lecturer in
rhetoric from 1584 to 1591. During this period, he became loosely acquainted with a circle of friends around
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex including
Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, for whom he seems to have acted as an accountant. He left Cambridge in 1591 to work for Greville full time, then spent the years from 1593 to 1597 travelling in
Europe, almost certainly on behalf of Essex who was seeking to establish a network of agents there. In 1621 Coke was elected Member of Parliament for
Warwick. He was appointed a
Master of Requests in 1622 and was
knighted in 1624. In 1624 he was elected MP for
St Germans and was re-elected for the seat in 1625. Coke married Marie Powell, and they set up home at Hall Court,
Kynaston,
Much Marcle. Several of their letters to each other survive. King Charles ruled without a parliament from 1628 and he found Coke's industry very useful to him. Coke kept his post until 1640. Dismissed from office, he retired to
his estate at
Melbourne in Derbyshire, which he had bought in 1628. He died at his house in
Tottenham near London, on 8 September 1644. Coke in his earlier years had been a defender of absolute monarchy and greatly disliked the papacy. He was described by
Clarendon as "a man of very dumb education and a narrower mind"; and again he says, "his cardinal perfection was industry and his most eminent infirmity covetousness." Coke's elder son,
Sir John Coke was a
Parliamentarian in the
English Civil War, while his younger son
Thomas Coke was a
Royalist. The Coke family continued to own
Melbourne Hall until
George Lewis Coke, an ambiguous figure who died childless in 1777. His sister married the family's lawyer and the Coke name was lost. ==References==