Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/423

 patron of art, and a member of the Edinburgh Association for Promotion of the Fine Arts. Privately he secured the attachment of many friends, who, while they respected his abilities and his somewhat stern sense of justice, were attracted by his genial qualities and his considerate kindness of heart. He died, unmarried, on 3 Feb. 1872. 

COX, THOMAS (d. 1734), topographer and translator, a master of arts, became rector of Chignal-Smealy, near Chelmsford, on 19 June 1680, and continued there until 1704. He was next preferred to the vicarage of Broomfield, Essex, on 11 Feb. 1685, and to the rectory of Stock-Harvard in the same county on 24 Feb. 1703, which livings he held until his death. He was also lecturer of St. Michael's, Cornhill, but resigned the appointment in 1730 (Daily Journal, 5 June 1730). He died on 11 Jan. 1733–4 (Gent. Mag. iv. 50). Newcourt's statement that he is the same with the Thomas Cox who held the vicarage of Great Waltham, Essex, from 1653 to 1670, is unsupported. Besides an assize sermon, ‘The Influence of Religion in the Administration of Justice,’ 4to, London, 1726, Cox published anonymously translations of two of Ellies-Dupin's works, which he entitled ‘The Evangelical History, with additions,’ 8vo, London, 1694 (third edition, 8vo, London, 1703–7), and ‘A Compendious History of the Church,’ second edition, 4 vols. 12mo, London, 1716–15. He likewise translated Plutarch's ‘Morals by way of Abstract done from the Greek,’ 8vo, London, 1707, and Panciroli's ‘History of many Memorable Things Lost,’ 2 vols. 12mo, London, 1715 (with new title-page, 12mo, London, 1727). The lives of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI in Kennett's ‘Complete History of England’ are also from his pen. But his chief and best-known undertaking was ‘Magna Britannia et Hibernia, antiqua et nova. Or, a new Survey of Great Britain, wherein to the Topographical Account given by Mr. Cambden and the late editors of his Britannia is added a more large History, not only of the Cities, Boroughs, Towns, and Parishes mentioned by them, but also of many other Places of Note and Antiquities since discovered. … Collected and composed by an impartial Hand,’ 6 vols. 4to; in the Savoy, 1720–31. Gough (British Topography, i. 33, 34) says that this work was originally published in monthly numbers as a supplement to the five volumes of ‘Atlas Geographus,’ 1711–17. It contains only the English counties. The introduction or account of the ancient state of Britain was written by Dr. Anthony Hall, who also contributed the account of Berkshire. Prefixed to each county is a map by Robert Morden. Altogether, it is a compilation of much merit (Notes and Queries, 6th ser. vii. 69, 338). Cox married Love, fifth daughter of Thomas Manwood of Lincoln's Inn and Priors in Broomfield, Essex.

Cox's son, Thomas, besides succeeding him in the rectory of Stock, was rector of Chignal-Smealy (1714–1735), and rector of Ramsden-Bellhouse (27 Sept. 1733), and died on 26 July 1763 (Gent. Mag. xxxiii. 415). From a sermon he published in 1712 on ‘The Necessity of a Right Understanding in order to True Wisdom,’ we learn that he had been educated at the grammar school of Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, under Dr. Thomas Took. 

COX, WALTER (1770–1837), Irish journalist, was the son of a Westmeath blacksmith, who apprenticed him to a gunsmith in Dublin. For some time he carried on business as a gunsmith, and in 1797 started a newspaper called ‘The Union Star’ in the interest of the United Irishmen, in which a policy of assassination was advocated. In 1804 he went to America, but returned to Ireland, and founded in 1807 the ‘Irish Magazine and Monthly Asylum for Neglected Biography.’ The tone of this periodical being regarded as seditious by the government, he was frequently prosecuted, and spent much of his time in gaol. Nevertheless it continued to appear with regularity until 1815, when he accepted a pension of 100l. per annum and a bonus of 400l., on condition that he should surrender all copies of it in his possession and emigrate to America. In 1816 he landed at New York, where he started a journal called ‘The Exile,’ of a somewhat similar character to the ‘Irish Magazine.’ This enterprise not succeeding, he crossed to France in 1820, and subsequently returned to Ireland, where his presence being discovered in 1835 his pension was forfeited. He died on 17 Jan. 1837 in poverty. Before leaving America he had given expression to his dissatisfaction with the institutions of the United States in a pamphlet entitled ‘The Snuff Box.’ During his residence in that country he is said to have been successively pawnbroker, chandler, dairyman, and whisky dealer. He stated in 1810 that his hostility to the English government arose in part from ‘atrocious indignities’ to which his father had been subjected by Lord Car-