Note 178 — PART I. INTRODUCTION. (continued 3)

A curious circumstance that attended Sir E. Coke’s second marriage ought not to pass here unnoticed.—That marriage was solemnized in a private house, without banns or licence, in consequence of which the married couple and the officiating clergyman, together with Lord Burleigh, who was one of the company, were prosecuted in the archbishop’s Court; but upon their submission, they escaped excommunication, and the consequent penalties, because, says the record, “they had offended not out of contumacy, but through ignorance of the Law in that point.”—So then the Lord Chief Justice of England, even Sir Edward Coke, transgressed the law through ignorance.