John Cooke

John Cooke (1608 –1660) (sometimes spelt John Cook) was the Solicitor General and the leading prosecutor of Charles I.

He was the son of a Leicestershire farmer, educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and at Gray's Inn. Prior to his appointment as prosecutor, he had established a reputation as a radical lawyer and an Independent.

In his recent biography, Geoffrey Robertson (2005) has argued that Cooke was a highly original and progressive lawyer, but he was not fundamentally anti-monarchist. However, he was forced to this stance when Charles refused to recognise the legality of the court or answer the charges of tyranny against him. Robertson says that Cooke bravely accepted his fate at the Restoration when many others compromised with the new regime.

As a regicide, Cooke was exempted after the Restoration of Charles II from the Indemnity and Oblivion Act which indemnified most opponents of the Monarchy for crimes they might have committed during the Interregnum (1649–1660). John Cook was tried and found guilty of high treason for his part in the trial of Charles I. He was hanged, drawn and quartered with Hugh Peters the radical preacher and another of the regicides on 16 October 1660.

Shortly before his death, Cooke wrote to a friend that "We fought for the public good and would have enfranchised the people and secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation, if the nation had not more delighted in servitude than in freedom."

The journalist, historian and anti-Corn Law propagandist William Cooke Taylor (1800-49) claimed descent from Cooke.

References

• Robertson, Geoffrey (2005) The Tyrannicide Brief: The Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold, Chatto & Windus
• Patrick Maume (ed.) William Cooke Taylor in Memoirs of Daniel O'Connell (University College Dublin Press reprint, 2004)

External links

• Biography of Cook British Civil Wars website

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