JOR'S-TREES; a genus of the triandra order, belonging to the monoecia clasps of plants. Of this there is but one species, a native of the Archipelago islands, and frequently cultivated in Spain and Portugal, and also in the West Indies. It is an annual plant, rising from a fibrous root, with two or three jointed stalks, to the height of two feet, with single, long, narrow leaves at each joint, resembling those of the reed; at the base of the leaves come out the spikes of flowers standing on short footstalks; the seeds greatly resemble those of Gromwell; whence the plant has by some writers been called Lithospermum. This plant may be propagated in this country by seeds brought from Portugal, and sown on a hot-bed; after which the young plants are to be removed into a warm border, and planted at the distance of two feet at least from each other. They will require no other care than to be kept free from weeds. In Spain and Portugal the poor people grind the seeds of this plant, in times of scarcity, and make a coarse kind of bread of them. The seeds are inclosed in small capiles about the bigness of an English pea, and of different colours. These are strung upon silk, and used instead of bracelets by some of the poorer sort in the West Indies, but especially by the negroes.

COKÉ, or COOKE (Sir Edward), lord chief justice of the king's bench in the reign of James I. was descended from an ancient family in Norfolk, and born at Mileham in 1549. When he was a student in the Inner-Temple, the first occasion of his distinguishing himself was his stating the case of a cook belonging to the Temple so exactly, that all the house, who were puzzled with it, admired him and his pleading, and the whole bench took notice of him. After his marriage with a lady of a great fortune, preferments flowed in upon him. The cities of Norwich and Coventry chose him for their recorder; the county of Norfolk, for one of their knights in parliament; and the house of commons, for their speaker, in the 35th year of queen Elizabeth. The queen appointed him solicitor-general in 1592, and attorney-general the next year. In 1603, he was knighted by king James I.; and in November the same year, upon the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, &c. at Winchester, he treated that gentleman with a scurrility of language hardly to be paralleled. June 27. he was appointed lord chief justice of the common pleas; and in 1613, lord chief justice of the king's bench, and sworn one of the privy council. In 1615, he was very vigorous in the discovery and prosecution of the persons employed in poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower in 1612. His contest not long after with the lord chancellor Egerton, with some other cases, hastened the ruin of his interest at court: so that he was sequestered from the council-table and the office of lord chief justice. In 1621, he vigorously maintained in the house of commons, that no proclamation is of any force against the parliament. The same year, being looked upon as one of the great incendiaries in the house of commons, he was removed from the council of state with disgrace; the king saying, that "he was the fittest instrument for a tyrant that ever was in England:" he was also committed to the Tower, and his papers were seized. Upon the calling of a new parliament in 1625, the court-party, to prevent his being elected a member, got him appointed sheriff of Buckinghamshire; to avoid the office, if possible, he drew up exceptions against the oath of a sheriff, but was obliged to undertake the office. In 1628, he spoke vigorously upon grievances; and made a speech in which he affirmed, that "the duke of Buckingham was the cause of all our miseries." While he lay upon his deathbed, his papers and last will were seized by an order of council. He died in 1634, and published many works: the most remarkable are his Institutes of the laws of England; the first part of which is only a translation and comment of Sir Thomas Littleton, one of the the chief justices of the common pleas in the reign of Edward IV.