still a student, he married his first wife, a young lady of no fortune. This made exertion on his part necessary, and in 1688 he was called to the bar. He was fortunate beyond his expectations, and in a few years rose to be leader of the home circuit. In 1695 he entered parliament as member for Hertford. His natural inclinations led him to espouse the whig side, and he was rewarded for his exertions in favour of the court by an appointment as king's counsel. Success followed in parliament as rapidly and strikingly as at the bar. Cowper remained in the house till the prorogation by William in 1700. In 1702 he was again returned as member for Bercalston. Queen Anne finding it advisable in 1705 to secure additional strength in her ministry by an infusion of whigs, Cowper was made keeper of the great seal. Besides actively discharging the duties as judge, between this time and 1707, he rendered important services by the duties which he performed as one of the commissioners for carrying out a union between England and Scotland. In 1707 he received the reward of his great exertions, by being created the first lord chancellor of Great Britain. The conduct of the war having rendered the ministry unpopular, they resigned in 1710. Cowper continued without office till the accession of George I., when he again became lord chancellor. During his Second term of office he was concerned with various important measures. He supported the impeachment of Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond; was one of the principal men to incite active steps against the rebels in 1715; and presided as lord high steward at the trials of the rebel lords in the same year. The causes of his resignation in 1718 are not well known; but it is believed to have originated in his having taken the part of the prince of Wales in some of his quarrels with George I. It was not in disgrace that he resigned, because, as Lord Campbell expresses it, he "submitted to an elevation in the peerage, being made an earl." Among the statesmen of his time Cowper stands high. He held the usual liberal creed of the day, that political privileges were to be extended to all protestants, but not to catholics; that all white men should be free, but that black men came under a different category. When the voice of public opinion was loud in its favour, he denounced the infamous South Sea bill. Among his last acts, were a strenuous opposition to a measure for imposing a special tax upon Roman catholics; and an endeavour, in a manner highly creditable to him, to mitigate the absurd and severe regulations of the British quarantine laws. In private life he had the fortune to gain the affections of all who came in contact with him. A little harmless vanity was—after he had overcome the errors of his youth—perhaps his worst defect. Without being exactly a scholar, he was liberal in his encouragement of learning and the fine arts. A fine gallery of paintings, still existing in his country house near Hertford, attests the munificence of his taste. He has left few writings. One or two of his charges as judge have been printed, and there are extant some letters written to the newspapers of the day. "An Impartial History of Parties," by Cowper, is to be found in the appendix to the first edition of the Life in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. iv., p. 421.—(Historical Register; 1723; Welsby's Lives of eminent English Judges.)—J. D. W.
COX, David: this admirable painter was born at Birmingham in 1793. He was one of the early members of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, and few have done more to uphold the importance of that branch of art. It is a sure indication of his merits that his productions of forty years ago are still rising in value. A collection of his paintings, exhibited in the year 1859, has done much to enhance his reputation. David Cox resided the greater part of his life at a small cottage on Harborne heath, Warwickshire, though Wales and Yorkshire have furnished the principal subjects for his paintings. He died on the 7th June, 1859.—W. T.
COX, Sir Richard, was born in Bandon, in the county of Cork, in the year 1650. After being called to the bar he was made recorder of Kinsale by Sir Richard Southwell in 1685. The troubles which followed in Ireland upon the accession of James II. alarmed Cox, and he removed with his family to Bristol. Here he wrote "Hibernia Anglicana." Upon the arrival of the prince of Orange in England, Cox, who had published a pamphlet in favour of the Revolution, was made under-secretary of state, and shortly after went to Ireland as secretary. He was afterwards made recorder of Waterford, and then a justice of the common pleas, in September, 1690; and in a few months after he was appointed military governor of Cork. In 1692 he was knighted by Lord Sidney, and in the following year he was elected a member of the philosophical society, and also one of the commissioners of forfeited estates in Ireland. On the dissolution of the commission Cox employed himself in study and research, and wrote an "Essay for the Conversion of the Irish." In 1700 he was promoted to the chief-justiceship of the common pleas, and to a seat in the privy council. On the death of William he was summoned to England, to give his advice on Irish affairs, and his clear and sagacious views and enlightened judgment were of great value to the government; and to him are due the statute "for quieting possessions," and that "for the recovery of small debts." So thoroughly were the abilities and character of Cox appreciated, that when Mr. Methuen, the lord chancellor of Ireland, was sent as ambassador to Portugal, Cox was promoted to that office. In 1705 Sir Richard, with Lord Cutts, was appointed lord justice during the absence of the duke of Ormonde in England. The duke was recalled in 1707, and the earl of Pembroke was appointed his successor. Cox soon found himself obliged to resign the seals, and meet the active enmity of those to whom his politics had made him obnoxious. This he did with the firmness natural to his character. He answered fully and ably every accusation that was brought against him, and exposed and confounded his accusers. On the death of Anne, Cox retired from public life; and in April, 1733, he was seized with apoplexy, of which he died in the following month, at the age of eighty-three.—J. F. W.
COX, Richard, an English prelate, born in 1499, and died in 1581. In the early part of his life he was imprisoned for heresy, but being released, was chosen master of Eton; and on the accession of Edward, one of whose tutors he had been, became a privy councillor, and chancellor to the university of Oxford. After another imprisonment—this time under Mary—he took refuge on the continent. Recalled when Elizabeth came to the throne, he was raised to the see of Ely. Cox was one of the translators of the Bishops' Bible. He contributed the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistle to the Romans.
COXCIE or COIXI, Michel, a famous old Flemish painter, born at Mechlin in 1497. He was for a short time a pupil of Bernard Von Orley, but afterwards residing at Rome he zealously studied the works of his great contemporary, Raphael. He decorated with paintings many of the churches of Antwerp and Brussels. He was so close a follower of the style of Raphael as by some of his countrymen to be denounced as a plagiarist of his designs. He died at Antwerp in 1592.—W. T.
COXE, William, archdeacon of Wilts, the eldest son of Dr. W. Coxe, physician to the king's household, was born in London, 7th March, 1747, and received his preparatory education at the Mary-le-Bonne grammar school and Eton. In his eighteenth year he entered King's college, and, among other honours, obtained the bachelor's prize two years in succession, for the best Latin dissertations. Having devoted himself to the church, and not to medicine as his father intended, he was admitted to deacon's orders in 1771, and in the same year received the curacy of Denham, near Uxbridge. At different periods of his life he visited the principal countries and capitals of Europe, examined with signal diligence and zeal the great repositories of historical evidence both at home and abroad, and gave to the world in ponderous tomes the results of his extensive research. On receiving a proposal from the duke of Marlborough to become tutor to the young marquis of Blandford, he threw up his curacy, and accompanied the young nobleman on his continental travels. At the end of two years failing health obliged him to give up this appointment; but in 1775 we find him in company with Lord Herbert, travelling through France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. His first published work, entitled "Sketches of the Natural, Civil, and Political State of Switzerland," was received so favourably that a second edition was called for. He next gave to the world "Russian Discoveries"—a book which one can no more read continuously than a logbook or a gazeteer. In 1784 appeared "Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark," the result of his observations during a tour in the northern parts of Europe. Ecclesiastical preferments now began to flow in. Two years after the time of his last work, the society of King's college, Cambridge, presented him to the living of Kingston-on-Thames, which he resigned in 1788, on being presented to the rectory of
