John Cook or Cooke (baptised 18 September 1608 – 16 October 1660) was the first Solicitor General of the English Commonwealth and led the prosecution of Charles I. Following The Restoration, Cook was convicted of regicide and hanged, drawn and quartered on 16 October 1660. He is considered an international legal icon and progenitor of international criminal law for being the first lawyer to prosecute a head of state for crimes against his people. Biography John Cook was the son of Leicestershire farmers Isaac and Elizabeth Cook whose farm was just outside Burbage. He was baptised on 18 September 1608 in the All Saints church in Husbands Bosworth and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and at Gray's Inn. Cook and his first wife Frances (died 1658) had a son (name unknown). With his second wife Mary Chawner, Cook had a daughter, Freelove, who was still a baby in 1660 when Cook was executed. Prior to his appointment as prosecutor, he had established a reputation as a radical lawyer and an Independent. In a 2005 biography of Cook, Geoffrey Robertson argued that Cook was a highly original and progressive lawyer: while representing John Lilburne he established the right to silence and was the first to advocate many radical reforms in law, including the cab-rank rule of advocacy, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the abolition of the use of courtroom Latin, the fusion of law and equity and restrictions on the use of the death penalty. Cook was among the first to argue that poverty was a cause of crime and to urge probation for those who stole to feed starving families; he originated the duty to act free of charge for those who could not afford it. Although he was not fundamentally anti-monarchist, he was forced to this stance when King Charles I would not recognise the legality of the court or answer the charges of tyranny against him. Robertson writes that Cook bravely accepted his fate at the Restoration when many others compromised with the new regime. The idea of trying a reigning king had no precedent; previous monarchs had been deposed, but had never been brought to trial as monarchs. The High Court of Justice established by an act of the Rump Parliament consisted of 135 commissioners (all firm Parliamentarians); Cook accepted the brief to lead the prosecution. The trial of King Charles I on charges of high