Leonard Cox
Leonard Cox was an English humanist, author of the first book in English on rhetoric. He was a scholar of international reputation who found patronage in Poland, and was friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon. He was known to contemporaries as a grammarian, rhetorician, poet, and preacher, and was skilled in the modern as well as the classical languages.
Life
He matriculated at Tübingen in 1514, where he was a student of Johann Stöffler. He spent two periods at the University of Kraków, where he lectured on classical authors; and as a schoolmaster. Carpenter takes a March 1519 reference to Leonard Cox in transit from Tournai to Antwerp to be him. John Leland wrote a Latin poem praising Cox, including references suggesting he had been at Paris and Prague.His patrons in Poland included Krzysztof Szydłowiecki. In 1527 Cox had the opportunity to participate in a high-profile exchange of open letters, from Martin Luther to Henry VIII of England. He printed the last two parts of the correspondence, adding an introduction glorifying Szydłowiecki, as well as a flattering poem by Stanislaus Hosius. Szydłowiecki and Jan Łaski gave Cox his introduction to Erasmus; he several times lectured on the De copia. Another patron was Piotr Tomicki. Cox had dedicated a 1518 book to Justus Ludovicus Decius from Alsace, who had been in Kraków from 1505.
He graduated B.A. at the University of Cambridge on a visit to England 1526-7. He was incorporated as B.A. at Oxford on 19 February 1530, and he also supplicated that university for the degree of M.A. Hugh Cook Faringdon, abbot of Reading, appointed him master of the grammar school in Reading, Berkshire and associated with Reading Abbey, by 1530. Anthony Wood relates that Cox supported John Frith when he was apprehended as a vagabond at Reading. Faringdon was executed in 1539, and Cox went to Caerleon where he kept a school. He had a son, Francis, D.D., of New College, Oxford.
He was succeeded in the mastership of Reading school by Leonard Bilson in 1546.