tenacious of his rights in money matters, and was often brought into conflict with courtiers who coveted episcopal lands. The Queen herself intervened, when he refused to grant Ely House to her favourite, Sir Christopher Hatton; but the well-known letter beginning "Proud Prelate" and threatening to unfrock him seems to be an impudent forgery which first saw the light in the Annual Register for 1761. It hardly, however, misrepresents the Queen's meaning, and Cox was forced to give way. These and other trials led him to resign his see in 1580, and it is significant that it remained vacant for nineteen years. Death, legacy, reputation Cox died in July 1581; a monument erected to his memory twenty years later in Ely cathedral was defaced, owing, it was said, to his evil repute. Strype (Whitgift, i. 2) gives Cox's hot temper and marriage as reasons why he was not made archbishop in 1583 in preference to Whitgift, who had been his chaplain; but Cox had been dead two years in 1583. His first wife's name is unknown; she was the mother of his five children, of whom Joanna married John Parker, the eldest son of Archbishop Matthew Parker. His second wife was Jane Auder, the widow of William Turner, the botanist and Dean of Wells Cathedral. One of his grandsons, Richard, moved to Ireland in about 1600, and was the ancestor of the Cox Baronets of Dunmanway, County Cork. See also List of chancellors of the University of Oxford Dean of Westminster References Deans of Christ Church, Oxford 1500 births 1581 deaths People from Aylesbury Vale Abbots of Westminster Alumni of King's College, Cambridge People educated at Eton College Deans of Westminster Bishops of Ely 16th-century Church of England bishops Chancellors of the University of Oxford Marian exiles People from Buckinghamshire Inmates of the Marshalsea Canons of Windsor 15th-century Anglican theologians 16th-century Anglican theologians Year of birth uncertain