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Former state House Speaker Marshall Cobleigh, a champion of the First Amendment and the state's presidential primary, died yesterday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston after a lengthy illness.

He was 78.

"He really is the history of New Hampshire politics," Concord attorney Tom Rath said last night. "He had great institutional memory. He loved the give and take."

Cobleigh, who became a state representative in 1963, served as House speaker from 1969 to 1972.

More in the Union Leader. His book, We Ain't Making Sausage Here, is the best I've read about post-war New Hampshire politics.