Richard Cockburn of Clerkington

Sir Richard Cockburn of Clerkington was a senior government official in Scotland during the reign of James VI. He was the eldest son and heir of Sir John Cockburn of Clerkington and Helen Maitland, and was born in about 1565 in Haddington, East Lothian. He died in October 1627 in Haddington.

Sir Richard was the Secretary of State to James VI from 1591 to 1596. In this capacity he was directly involved in the private communications between James and Queen Elizabeth I in the final years of the queen's reign. Certainly on 15 September 1594 he was in London where he met the queen and kissed her hand; then on 12 November 1594 he was sent by the English Privy Council member, Robert Cecil, a letter from the queen that he was to convey back to James. In 1595 Sir Richard's trip to England to see the queen is mentioned in a letter from James to Elizabeth. In 1591 Sir Richard was also admitted as a Lord of Session. In May 1596 Sir Richard was replaced as Secretary of State by John Lindsay of Balcarres, one of the eight Octavians who were appointed by James in January of that same year as commissioners to reform the financial processes of the Scottish government.

In 1598 Sir Richard regained the office of Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, an inherited position that had been taken over temporarily by John Lindsay. In 1610 he was confirmed as a member in the new Privy Council and at the same time appointed to the Court of High Commission for church affairs. But in February 1626 he was removed from the bench as a result of the resolution by the new king, Charles I, that no noblemen nor officers of the state be simultaneously members of the judiciary.

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