Sir Richard Cox

Sir Richard Cox, 1st Baronet PC (25 March 1650 – 3 May 1733) was an Irish lawyer and judge. He served as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for Ireland from 1701 to 1703, Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1703 to 1707 and as Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench for Ireland from 1711 to 1714.

Cox was born in Bandon, Ireland. He was the great-great-grandson of Richard Cox, the Chancellor of Oxford in 1547. His family had arrived from Wiltshire in c. 1600, and was dispossessed in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. His father was Captain Richard Cox II (1610–c.1651) and his mother was Katherine Bird, daughter of Walter Bird, and widow of Captain Thomas Batten. She was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland and died c.1651/52, probably in Bandon. Her death was generally said to be caused by grief for her husband, who was murdered by one Captain Norton in unexplained circumstances. Richard was thus orphaned by the age of three and raised by his maternal grandparents and his uncle John Bird in County Cork. He went to school in Clonakilty, and then by his own account spent "three years idling". Having inherited a small property from his grandfather, he went to England to study law.

He qualified at Gray's Inn, London, in 1673; and was apprenticed in the manorial courts of the Boyle family, of County Cork. In 1674 he made an imprudent marriage to Mary Bourne, a girl of fifteen, whose family he claimed had grossly deceived him as to the size of her dowry. He quarreled bitterly with his mother-in-law, retired to the country for a time, then resolved to make his fortune at the Irish Bar. He built up a lucrative legal practice, was appointed Recorder of Kinsale, and acquired an estate at Clonakilty by 1687; but lost his recordership after the accession of James II. He moved to Bristol, where he practiced as a barrister and became acquainted with Sir Robert Southwell, who introduced him to the Duke of Ormonde, thereafter his patron.

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