The Tyrannicide Brief: The Story of the Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold b

Description: The Tyrannicide Brief by Geoffrey Robertson 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 farmer, but he had the courage to bring the Kings trial to its dramatic conclusion: the English republic. FORMAT Paperback CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Life and law during the Civil Wars as you have never seen it before - and a passionate argument for the peoples right of justice against tyrannical leaders.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 farmer, but he had the courage to bring the Kings 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, tried and brutally executed.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 a lasting inspiration to the modern world. Notes Life and law during the Civil Wars as you have never seen it before - and a passionate argument for the peoples right of justice against tyrannical leaders. Author Biography Geoffrey Robertson QC is a leading human rights lawyer and a UN war-crimes judge. He has been counsel in many notable Old Bailey trials, has defended hundreds of men facing death sentences in the Caribbean, and has won landmark rulings on civil liberty from the highest courts in Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth. He was involved in cases against General Pinochet and Hastings Banda, and in the training of judges who tried Saddam Hussein. His book Crimes against Humanity has been an inspiration for the global justice movement, and he is the author of an acclaimed memoir, The Justice Game, and the textbook Media Law. He is married to Kathy Lette. Mr Robertson is Head of Doughty Street Chambers, a Master of the Middle Temple, a Recorder and visiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London. Review Redeems from obscurity an unsung hero of true greatness... Sheds invigorating light on the course of the English civil war * Spectator *Robertson has come up with that desperately rare thing: a subject worthy of biography who has never before been addressed and, to his huge advantage, in his field. The result is a work of literary advocacy as elegant, impassioned and original as any the author can ever have laid before a court -- Anthony Holden * Observer *Robertson tells a spellbinding story. He combines lucid analysis of the legal issues with acute understanding of the various factions. His prose is crisp and he inserts some comments that only a professional advocate, as opposed to an academic historian, would make -- Christopher Silvester * Daily Telegraph *Fascinating... Illuminating... This is a work of great compassion and, at a time when it seems to be fashionable for politicians to denigrate lawyers, it is an essential read for anyone who believes in the fearless independence of the law -- John Cooper * The Times *[Robertsons] forensic intelligence can penetrate where professional historians have not reached -- Blair Worden * Literary Review * Promotional Life and law during the Civil Wars as you have never seen it before - and a passionate argument for the peoples right of justice against tyrannical leaders. Review Text Redeems from obscurity an unsung hero of true greatness... Sheds invigorating light on the course of the English civil war Review Quote Praise from the United Kingdom for The Tyrannicide Brief "Those terrible, blood-soaked years are vividly conjured up by Geoffrey Robertson. This is a fine book: well researched, well written, well indexed and well illustrated. The fact there is no bibliography is evidence that Robertson has broken new ground. Not only has he written the first biography of John Cooke, one of the pivotal figures of the mid-seventeenth century, but he has illuminated the legal process by which a powerful monarch was held to account by the law of the land." Sunday Herald "In telling his story, Geoffrey Robertson has redeemed from obscurity an unsung hero of true greatness, a selfless champion of the poor and a law reformer of rare distinction. More important, he has shed invigorating light on the course of the English Civil War." The Spectator "Geoffrey Robertson provides us with some fascinating insights into this significant case. What makes the book especially illuminating are the parallels with modern practice . . . [A] work of great compassion and, at a time when it seems to be fashionable for politicians to denigrate lawyers, an essential read for anyone who believes in the fearless independence of the law." The Times "[Robertsons] forensic intelligence can penetrate where professional historians have not yet reached." Literary Review "A work of literary advocacy as elegant, impassioned and original as any the author can ever have laid before a court." The Observer From the Hardcover edition. Promotional "Headline" Life and law during the Civil Wars as you have never seen it before - and a passionate argument for the peoples right of justice against tyrannical leaders. Excerpt from Book The first recorded existence of John Cooke is in the register of All Saints church in the village of Husbands Bosworth, just south of Leicester. Here he was baptised on 18 September 1608, an indication that his birth had taken place a few days before. He came from poor but healthy farming stock: his father, Isaac Cooke, was twenty-five, and would live until the age of seventy-four. Isaac was one of twelve children of Abraham Cooke, who would die in 1620 at a similar age. If John could come through his early years, in this period when a third of all infants died before reaching five, he could be expected to live through all the seven ages of man predicted by Shakespeare, at this time writing his final plays for the London theatre. His family were God-fearing farmers, with allotments that dotted the countryside for twenty miles to the town of Burbage. Husbands Bosworth was named for all its husbandmen tenant farmers whose smallholdings sustained their families but little else and that would have been his parents expectation for baby John. What mattered most to Isaac and Elizabeth was that he would live an abstemious and pious life, his ability to do so being regarded as an outward sign that he was one of the elect predestined for paradise when the Son of God returned to claim the earth. This mattered so much to these Puritan parents that for the baptism of their first-born they had travelled from their own farm, just outside Burbage, where the rector was a well-connected Anglican who obeyed the bishop, to Elizabeths austere family church. Its minister was willing to dispense with impure rituals, like motioning the sign of the cross over the head of the baptised infant. That such a tiny gesture could become a major bone of contention between the bishops of the Church of England, who were sticklers for rituals and symbols, and those Puritan worshippers who wished to purify the Church of all such distractions, was typical of the internecine squabbling that had rent the Anglican religion. Puritans like the Cookes were thick on the ground in the Midlands and the eastern counties and many local ministers were sympathetic to their preference for deritualised worship, which was anathema to King James and his bishops. James I had been invited from Scotland (where he ruled as James VI) to take the English throne on Elizabeth Is death in 1603. The optimism among Puritans in England that a man from the austere Calvinist Kirk would look sympathetically on their similar form of worship had soon been dashed: James was obsessed with his God-given right to rule as an absolute prince, through a hierarchy supported by archbishops and bishops, alongside his councillors and favourite courtiers. From the outset of his reign he urged the Anglican authorities to discipline ministers who refused to follow approved rituals or who spoke on politics from the pulpit. James I was very far from being the wisest fool in Christendom: he was highly educated and very canny, and he knew exactly where the Puritans hostility to hierarchy in their church would lead: no Bishop, no King. James warned his son to hate no man more than a proud Puritan. He did not persecute them, but encouraged the Church to discriminate against them and to sack their ministers. The Kings edicts, on matters of Sunday observance in particular, were often at variance with the strict moral code of these godly communities, and the profligacy and debauchery of his court further outraged them. As John Cooke grew up, there was much prurient gossip amongst the faithful about a monarch who claimed divine authority yet who maintained a luxurious and licentious court, financed by selling titles and monopolies, and who boasted that his favourite pastimes were hunting witches, prophets, Puritans, dead cats and hares. After all, James had a grotesque parentage: his mother was Mary, Queen of Scots. He was Details ISBN0099459191 Author Geoffrey Robertson Year 2006 ISBN-10 0099459191 ISBN-13 9780099459194 Format Paperback Imprint Vintage Place of Publication London Country of Publication United Kingdom DEWEY 941.062092 Qualifications QC Media Book Publisher Vintage Publishing Subtitle The Story of the Man who sent Charles I to the Scaffold Illustrations 8 Short Title The Tyrannicide Brief UK Release Date 2006-10-05 Pages 464 Publication Date 2006-10-05 AU Release Date 2006-10-05 NZ Release Date 2006-10-05 Alternative 9781407066035 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:14732415;

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