Bury, Lancashire.
J. O. treats _The Lord Coke, his Speech and Charge, with a Discoverie of
the Abuses and Corruptions of Officers_, 8vo. London: N. Butter, 1607, as a
genuine document; but it is not so; and, lest the error should gain ground,
the following account of the book, from the Preface, by Lord Coke, to the
seventh part of his _Reports_, is subjoined:
"And little do I esteem an uncharitable and malicious practice in
publishing of an erroneous and ill-spelled pamphlet under the name
Pricket, and dedicating it to my singular good lord and father-in-law,
the Earl of Exeter, as a charge given at the assizes holden at the city
of Norwich, 4th August, 1606, which I protest was not only published
without my privity, but (beside the omission of divers principal
matters) that there is no one period therein expressed in that sort and
sense that I delivered: wherein it is worthy of observation, how their
expectation (of scandalizing me) was wholly deceived; for behold the
catastrophe! Such of the readers as were learned in the laws, finding
not only gross errors and absurdities on law, but palpable mistakings
in the very words of art, and the whole context of that rude and ragged
style wholly dissonant (the subject being legal) from a lawyer's
dialect, concluded that _inimicus et iniquus homo superseminavit
zizania in medio tritici_, the other discreet and indifferent readers,
out of sense and reason, found out the same conclusion, both in respect
of the vanity of the phrase, and for that I, publishing about the same
time one of my commentaries, would, if I had intended the publication
of any such matter, have done it myself, and not to have suffered any
of my works pass under the name of Pricket; and so _unâ voce
conclamaverunt omnes_, that it was a shameful and shameless practice,
and the author thereof to be a wicked and malicious falsary."