Page:Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke - 1899.djvu/18

 1 6 THE ARTE OR CRAFTE OF RHETHORYKE

grace to set abrode one thing or oother to the perpetual! praise of your Lordeshippes most excellente vertues, & the commune proufiteof students. Thus with all humilite I for this present tyme take my leve, beseching the blessid Trinitie long to preserve your goode Lordeshippe wit A con- tinuall encrease of most prosperous honour.

Written at Caerleon in Wales on Trinite sonday * Your goode Lordeshippes

poor servante & bounden bedeman

Leonard Cox.

Endorsed : " To the right honorable and my singular goode Lorde the lorde prevy scale."

The Erotemata Rhetorica unfortunately we do not possess. It is likely enough that the confusion and change of fortune inter- vening on the tragic ending of his patron so soon after writing these letters prevented Cox from going on with his plan.

This last letter, it will be noticed, is dated from Caerleon, in

Wales. Whether Cox, whose birthplace was in Wales, was there

simply on a visit, or whether he had gone to reside

n> there, perhaps after the equally tragic death of his

old patron, the Abbot of Reading, 2 in 1539, and was teaching school

there, as Wood 3 conjectures, is uncertain. 4

It is, however, certain, whether in the meanwhile he had left

Reading or not, that on Feb. 10, 1541, a royal patent 5 was issued

Royal Grant granting and confirming to Cox the office of master

to Cox at of the grammar-school at Reading "Dedimus et

Reading. Concedimus," as the document runs, "ac per Prae-

sentes Daraus & Concedimus eidem Leonardo Officium Magistri

sive Prczceptoris Schola Grammaticalis sive Ludi literarii Villas

nostrae de Reading in Comitatu nostro Berks." The patent then

proceeds also to grant to Cox the messuage which he was then

occupying, together with a plot of ground adjoining "ex parte

Z I. e. 23 May, 1540.

2 See infra, p. 104, note to p. I, line 3.

3 Athcn. Oxon. ed. Bliss, I, 123: "In the year 1540 (32 Hen. 8) I find that he was living at Caerleon in his native country, where I think he taught school."

4 Note however the terms of the patent rehearsed below, by which it appears that Cox was still technically occupying a messuage pertinent to the school at Reading at the time of the issuing of the patent in 1541.

s Given in full in Rymer's Foedera (London, 1712), Vol. XIV. p. 714.

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