Charles I waged civil wars that cost one in ten Englishmen their lives. But in 1649 parliament was hard put to find a lawyer with the skill and daring to prosecute a King who was above the law: in the end, the man they briefed was the radical barrister, John Cooke.
Cooke was a plebeian, son of a poor Leicestershire farmer. His puritan conscience, political vision, and love of civil liberty gave him the courage to bring the King’s trial to its dramatic conclusion: the English republic. Cromwell appointed him as a reforming Chief Justice in Ireland, but in 1660 he was dragged back to the Old Bailey for a rigged trial and brutally executed.
Geoffrey Robertson QC, the internationally renowned Australian lawyer, reinvigorates the republican debate with this gripping account of how that ‘good old cause’ produced Parliamentary sovereignty, equal justice and the rule of law, exposing at last Britain’s secret history of republican achievement.
John Cooke was the bravest of barristers, who risked his own life to make tyranny a crime. He originated the right to silence, the ‘cab rank’ rule of advocacy and the duty to act free-of-charge for the poor. He conducted the first trial of a Head of State for waging war on his own people – a forerunner of the prosecutions of Pinochet, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, and an inspiring legacy for the modern world.