COCK (COCKE), Charles George (1612-82), of Norwich, Norf.

Cock’s forebears were first recorded at Forncett, ten miles to the south of Norwich, in the mid-sixteenth century before settling a generation later in Norwich itself.29Vis. Norf. 1664, ii. 255. His father, Francis, was a successful grocer, who by 1612 could afford to buy Strangers’ Hall to serve as the family residence within the city. He served as mayor in 1627.30Cozens-Hardy and Kent, Mayors of Norwich, 76-7; Index of Norwich City Officers, pp. xxiv, 39. The future MP, baptised as George, briefly attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, before training as a lawyer at the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1637. He presumably then practised as a barrister. There is no reason to suppose that he fought in the civil war; his title of ‘Colonel’ was acquired later. In 1651 he would write in some detail about the political events of the 1640s, but nothing firm is known about his views at the time. However, when he first entered the political arena during the final years of that decade, it was as a strong supporter of Parliament.

His earliest public role dated from May 1648, when, as Charles George Cock, he was appointed by Parliament to the committee to examine the riots of 23-24 April at Norwich.31CJ v. 559b-560a. Later that same month he was one of the fifteen new deputy lieutenants for Norwich appointed by Parliament to secure its control of the city.32CJ v. 578b; LJ x. 261a. Added to the Norfolk commission of the peace in 1649 following the king’s execution, Cock quickly established himself as an active county magistrate.33C231/6, p. 144; Norf. QSOB, 20-82. Among the many duties he undertook as a justice during the early 1650s was helping to oversee the repairs to Norwich Castle and the Shirehouse.34Norf. QSOB, 21, 26, 34, 42, 44, 51, 55, 60, 71. In July 1651 he received a commission as the colonel of a troop of volunteers raised to help counter the invasion of England by Charles Stuart and the Scots.35CSP Dom. 1651, p. 516.

Some of the Norfolk corporations meanwhile began to make use of his legal expertise. From April 1650 he was employed by the Norwich corporation as its steward, replacing Erasmus Earle*, while in December of that same year he was appointed by the corporation of Great Yarmouth to act as the town’s legal adviser following the appointment of their recorder, Miles Corbett*, as one of the commissioners for Irish affairs.36Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 95v; Y/C 19/7, ff. 188, 254. Both corporations were soon consulting with him about proposed petitions to Parliament, which in the case of Norwich concerned plans to use the assets of Norwich Cathedral to support the poor, whereas the Yarmouth corporation petitioned for financial support for their local ministers.37Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 98; Y/C 19/7, ff. 200v, 205. In 1654, as steward of Norwich, he presided over the case of the Quakers, George Whitehead and James Lancaster, reprimanding them for their refusal to remove their hats in his presence.38G. Whitehead, The Christian Progress (1725), 35-6.

Cock came to wider prominence in 1651 when he published his first book, English-Law.39C.G. Cock, English-Law (1651). This had two parts. The first was both a survey of biblical, classical and English history from the creation of the world to Cock’s own day and an essay on the current state of English law. The second, which may well have been written earlier, when England was still a monarchy, was a more theoretical discussion of the basis of ‘Christian government’. The first part included a detailed discussion of the origins and course of the civil war. This was harshly critical of Charles I, whom Cock accused of being under the sway of overmighty bishops and of abusing the law courts.40Cock, English-Law, 36-42. It was with deliberate irony that he said of him that he was ‘the best of kings, I may admit, but the worst of all other men’.41Cock, English-Law, 64. Yet Cock was no more sympathetic towards Charles’s enemies. Presbyterians, Independents, the New Model army and Levellers were treated with equal scorn.42Cock, English-Law, 58-9, 60-1, 66-9. Cock’s account of recent politics was one of utter cynicism.

That cynicism extended also to his discussion of the workings of the law courts. Almost every aspect of English law seemed to him to be in need of reform.43Cock, English-Law, 42-9, 73-95. He was not alone in thinking this and by 1653 law reform had become a hot political topic. Thus, the abolition of the church courts had removed the means by which wills had previously been proved. On 8 April 1653, in one of its last acts before its dismissal, the Rump appointed 20 men, not all of whom were lawyers, to take over those functions. Cock was one of them.44A. and O. The Nominated Parliament was even keener to tackle the issue of law reform and so turned its attention to another civil law jurisdiction, the court of admiralty. The result was that on 30 July 1653 Cock was appointed as an admiralty judge, along with two civil lawyers, John Godolphin (brother of Sir William*) and William Clark.45CJ vii. 293a; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 435.

Cock’s position as the Norwich corporation’s steward gave him a strong claim to be chosen as one of the Norwich MPs in the election for the first Protectoral Parliament in 1654. However, the poll, held on 12 July, was a messy affair and Cock lost out to Barnard Church* and John Hobart*. On claiming victory, Hobart graciously acknowledged that Cock’s talents were ‘far above whatsoever I can any way pretend to.’46Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 114. Cock was as forgiving as Hobart was magnanimous and before long he was seeking a favour from him. Among those groups that organised petitions to this Parliaments was the civil lawyers, ostensibly to ask it to encourage the study of civil law but effectively seeking assurances that their professional futures were safe. They approached Cock for his assistance, so on 17 October he wrote to John Hobart asking him to present the petition to the House. Hobart seems to have agreed and a fortnight later Cock sent him a list of MPs who might be willing to support it.47Bodl. Tanner 51, ff. 8-12. The petition was heard by the House on 4 November 1654.48CJ vii. 382a.

Cock tried his luck again in the 1656 elections. Standing in the Norfolk county poll, he came twelfth, with 1,040 votes, but there were only ten seats available.49R. Temple, ‘A 1654 protectorate parliamentary election return’, Cromwelliana, ser. II, iii. 58. His connections with Great Yarmouth, however, now worked to his advantage. In September 1655 he had succeeded Corbett as the town’s recorder.50Norf. RO, Y/C 19/7, f. 264. Now, on 15 August 1656, the corporation elected him as one of its two MPs.51Norf. RO, Y/C 19/7, f. 279; TSP v. 328. (Also elected to this Parliament, as MP for Suffolk, was John Sicklemor*, whose sister-in-law, Sarah Bacon, Cock had recently married.)52Norf. RO, MC 36/175; Peds. of the Knights, 14.

There is some potential for confusion about Cock’s activities during the opening months of the 1656 Parliament, as the MP for St Albans was Alban Coxe* and initially the Journals described them both as ‘Colonel’. Only very rarely was Cock’s full name indicated.53CJ vii. 427a. But there is little doubt that most of the references in the Journals to ‘Colonel Cock’ relate to the Great Yarmouth MP. A similar problem arises in relation to the diary kept by Thomas Burton*. In both this Parliament and the next Burton just refers to them interchangeably as Colonel ‘Cocks’, ‘Cock’, ‘Cook’ or ‘Cooks’.54Add. 15859, ff. 5v, 18, 35v, 84; Add. 15860, f. 60; Add. 15861, ff. 2v, 33, 55v, 59, 64v, 68, 70v, 79, 100, 101v; Add. 15862, ff. 6, 117v; Add. 15863, ff. 5, 31v, 57v, 105v, 167; Add. 15864, f. 14. A single reference to one of them as ‘Capt. Cocks’ was probably just a mistake.55Add. 15861, f. 30v. The one time he unambiguous distinguishes between them, he describes them as ‘Col. Cocks’ (Coxe) and ‘Col. Ch. Cocks’ (Cock).56Add. 15859, ff. 129, 129v. At least one speech can, on internal grounds, be attributed to Coxe.57Add. 15863, f. 167; Burton’s Diary, iv. 251. But others display a degree of legal knowledge that can more easily be associated with Cock.58Add. 15859, f. 84; Add. 15860, f. 60; Add. 15863, f. 31v; Burton’s Diary, i. 9-10, 187, ii. 103, iii. 512-13. So it would seem that Burton was making no real attempt to distinguish between them. On balance, however, most of the speeches, like most of the Journal references, should probably be attributed to Cock. As a professional barrister who had written extensively on legal matters, it does seem likely that it was Cock rather than Coxe who was the more voluble and more active of the two. If so, it would seem that Cock quickly made his mark in the 1656 Parliament.

On 19 September 1656, just two days after the Parliament had assembled, he was named to the committee on the bill repudiating Charles Stuart’s claim to the English crown.59CJ vii. 425a; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 119. Three days later he was one of the MPs sent to the lord protector with the draft declaration for a fast day.60CJ vii. 426a. He was also soon named to the committees on Scottish and Irish affairs (23 Sept.) and on the bills for security of the lord protector’s person (26 Sept.), timber (27 Sept.), sequestered ecclesiastical livings (4 Oct.), and against customary oaths (7 Oct.).61CJ vii. 427a, 429a, 429b, 434a, 435b. On 7 October he headed the list of those named to consider the bill to repeal parts of the existing laws concerning corn, while two days later he was similarly first-named to the committee to draft a bill against overpriced wine.62CJ vii. 435b, 436b, 454b. Other committees to which he was appointed included those on the excise arrears (17 Oct.), trade (20 Oct.) and the estates of Catholics still under sequestration (22 Oct.).63CJ vii. 440a, 442a, 444a. As the local MP, he could hardly be omitted from the committee on the bill for the maintenance of the Great Yarmouth ministers (14 Nov.).64CJ vii. 453b. Later, on 24 November, he reported from that committee on its proposed amendments, as well as acting as teller with John Disbrowe* in favour of retaining the clause which would enable the collection of money for that purpose to be enforced.65CJ vii. 458a. Moreover, quite a few of Cock’s committee appointments, such as those on abuses relating to writs of certiorari (25 Sept.), revision to the laws on sexual offences (4 Oct.), the confirmation of the abolition of the court of wards (29 Oct.), the recovery of small debts (1 Nov.), the creation of law courts at York (20 Nov.) and the liberties of the Isle of Ely (28 Nov.), directly concerned the operation of the legal system.66CJ vii. 428a, 433b, 447a, 449a, 456a, 460b. On 27 October he dined with the Dutch ambassador, Willem Nieupoort, who raised with him the case of three Dutch merchant ships detained by the English authorities. Cock agreed to do what he could to resolve the matter.67TSP v. 536.

One major reason why Cock was so active so quickly was that he remained committed to the cause of law reform. His unusual position as a common law barrister who was now a judge in two courts based largely on civil law meant that he had first-hand experience of some of the messier jurisdictional loose ends left over from the recent constitutional and religious upheavals. The previous year he had raised the issue of the licensing of public notaries with the secretary of state, John Thurloe*. As he then pointed out, notaries had formerly been licensed by the master of the faculties of the province of Canterbury, an episcopal position that no longer existed.68TSP iii. 687. In late October 1656 a bill to further clarify the law on probate was introduced in Parliament. Cock was unsurprisingly one of the first names that came to mind when the committee to which it was referred was appointed on 27 October.69CJ vii. 446a. His other judicial office also made him an obvious person to be included the following day on the committee to review the law on wrecks.70CJ vii. 446b. He was also included on 22 November on the committee to consider the latest petition from the civil lawyers.71CJ vii. 457a.

On 3 December he successfully moved that the committee for the bill on Norwich stuffs ‘have power to bring in penalties for filling up the blanks in the bill.’72Burton’s Diary, i. 9; CJ vii. 463b. Later that same day Drugo Wright appeared before the House accused of breaching parliamentary privilege by delivering a subpoena against one of the Norfolk MPs, Robert Wilton*. Wilton was willing to let the matter drop, but the Speaker, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, seemed inclined to pursue the matter. Cock countered Widdrington by suggesting that the fact that it was a mere subpoena lessened the offence. Having made his apologies, Wright was then discharged.73Burton’s Diary, i. 9-10; CJ vii. 464a. Six days later Cock introduced the additional bill for the encouragement of trade.74Burton’s Diary, i. 82. On 20 December he also spoke against the private bill for Sir John Cobham alias Brooke.75Burton’s Diary, i. 187.

His one contribution to the debates on the blasphemy case against James Naylor was essentially procedural but nevertheless revealing. Having first acknowledged that this was ‘a matter of great moment’, he declared, ‘I am as much for liberty of conscience as any man, but when one runs into these extravagancies I think he exceeds that liberty.’ He then suggested that they should first summon Naylor before them in order for him to enter his plea and that they should only then decide how to proceed.76Burton’s Diary, i. 38-9.

Cock was absent at the call of the House at the end of the month because, as Sir Gilbert Pykeringe* and John Claypoole* confirmed, his wife was sick of smallpox.77Add. 15859, f. 189v; Burton’s Diary, i. 285. (Coxe was also being kept away by family matters.) Cock may have used this absence to write another book. Englands Compleat Law-Judge and Lawyer justified but also carefully demarcated the jurisdictions of Cock’s own courts, probate and admiralty. This was probably published the following spring.78C.G. Cocke, Englands Compleat Law-Judge and Lawyer (1656), E.870.3.

Cock was back at Westminster by 9 February 1657, when he was added to the committee on the bill to unite the Exeter parishes, after the petition of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden was referred to it, as well as being named to the committee on the creditors of Sir William Dick.79CJ vii. 488b. A month later, on 9 March, he reported from the committee for trade on the amendments to the additional bill for the encouragement of trade.80CJ vii. 500b. The next day was named to the committee on the clause concerning the qualification of electors in the Humble Petition and Advice.81CJ vii. 501a. On 30 April he was included on the committee on the bill to regulate the court of Chancery.82CJ vii. 528a. When he spoke on 2 May in the debate on the petition from John Blount and his wife, the dowager countess of Stirling, seeking the reversal of some land transactions, Cock told the House that he was ‘well acquainted with this business’. Had he acted as their lawyer? He went on to argue that their petition was justified and so deserved to be heard.83Burton’s Diary, ii. 103. During the debate on 20 June on the bill to restrain building in London, he was one of the five MPs asked to withdraw to revise the clause protecting those offenders who paid their fines from further prosecution.84CJ vii. 565a, 566a. Later that same day he acted as teller for those who tried to prevent the House sitting that afternoon.85CJ vii. 566b.

Cock spoke three times on specific provisions in the assessment bill. On 4 June Thomas Whitgreve* proposed that individual pieces of land should not be rated in more than one county. Cock was sceptical, not because the principle was not a fair one but because he thought that this would cause disputes between the rival county assessment commissions.86Burton’s Diary, ii. 172. Other MPs however ignored him and Whitgreve’s proviso was incorporated into the bill. When the following week the House heard the petition from landowners in Ireland requesting that the total Irish assessment should be reduced to reflect their economic difficulties, Cock was unsympathetic. During the debate on 12 June he claimed that these landowners had bought their lands ‘for nothing’ (a comment they would doubtless have disputed) and yet they now wanted to avoid paying their taxes.87Burton’s Diary, ii. 226. Later that same day some MPs proposed that individual assessment demands should be set by requiring taxpayers to swear on oath as to the value of their property. Cock thought that this idea had some merit, but only if those giving false information were then severely punished. 88Burton’s Diary, ii. 230.

On the Humble Petition and Advice, which had dominated proceedings throughout that spring, Cock seems to have been silent. Comments made by him in February 1658 would indicate that he had voted against the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell*. Interestingly, those comments would also imply that his reason for doing so was that they were ‘not a full and a free House’.89Burton’s Diary, ii. 437. In other words, he seems to have thought that the exclusion of so many MPs from the Commons at the start of this Parliament undermined its right to make such a major constitutional change.

Cock did, however, have more to say at the time when they moved on to discuss the proposed Additional Petition and Advice. On 23 June MPs debated the form of the new oath to be taken by Cromwell as the lord protector. Cock thought this unnecessary, on the grounds that Cromwell had previously taken an oath as lord protector in December 1653. With a touch of his characteristic irony, he did concede that those who had set up the protectorate in 1653 ‘were soonest weary of it’, but he warned that requiring a new oath would make it appear ‘as if his highness had betrayed his former trust and [that] you must now rebind him’.90Burton’s Diary, ii. 280-1. The next day the House turned to the question of the form of the oath to be taken by the members of the protector’s council. Cock then proposed that this oath be amended so that, as well as declaring their loyalty to the protector, the councillors would have to promise that they would not do anything ‘to the disadvantage of the commonwealth’.91Burton’s Diary, ii. 288. But no one else seems to have taken up this suggestion and these words were not included in the final text of the oath. That same day the House also debated the arrangements for summoning those who were to sit in the second chamber, the ‘Other House’. The Humble Petition had specified that they were to be ‘nominated by your highness and approved by this House [the Commons]’. It was now proposed that those summoned by the protector should be allowed to sit ‘without further approbation of this House’. Cock disagreed. In particular, he made the sneering suggestion that some of those arguing in favour of the change themselves hoped to be summoned.92Burton’s Diary, ii. 299. This however made no difference to the outcome. On 25 June the Commons considered whether the clause debarring royalists and others from sitting in Parliament should exempt ‘such Persons as have been immediately employed by his highness’ council in Scotland, being of good conversation’. There were suggestions that this was to benefit the commander-in-chief in Scotland and former royalist, George Monck*. Cock spoke in support of this amendment, which was nevertheless rejected.93Burton’s Diary, ii. 307.

When Parliament re-assembled on 20 January 1658, Cock was the first MP to speak in a debate. The first item of business for them to consider was whether to admit John Smythe as the new clerk of the Commons. Cock immediately suggested that they should first debate whether they had the right to appoint the clerk or not.94Burton’s Diary, ii. 316. Others agreed, but, in the end, instead of formally asserting their power to appoint the clerk, the Commons just passed a resolution appointing Smythe. The vacancy had arisen because, now that there was a new second chamber, the previous clerk, Henry Scobell, had been promoted to become the clerk of the Parliaments. Accepting Smythe’s appointment meant accepting Scobell’s appointment, which in turn could be interpreted as a tacit acknowledgment of the Other House. Five days later Edward Turnor* reported back to the House from the committee that had been created to consider Scobell’s appointment. On Cock’s motion, Scobell’s patent was then read.95Burton’s Diary, ii. 349.

These were just the opening moves in the attempt by some MPs, led by Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, to disrupt business by making an issue of the Other House’s status. So, when on 3 February two of the judges arrived at the door of the chamber with a message from the Other House, Hesilrige denounced this as further evidence that the new second chamber was acting just like the old House of Lords. In the ensuing debate Cock made his aforementioned comments implying that he had previously voted against the offer of the kingship to Cromwell. But he mentioned this in order to claim that he had now changed his mind.96Burton’s Diary, ii. 437. As his reason for having voted against had been that the exclusion of the MPs, he presumably now thought that the fact that those excluded MPs had now been allowed to take their seats gave this Parliament a legitimacy that it had previously lacked. Cock however would have been smart enough to realise that as some of the excluded MPs were unreconstructed republicans, there was no real prospect of the kingship proposals being revived. Moreover, on the immediate issue to hand, he went on to say that he did not think that they should call the Other House the ‘House of Lords’.97Burton’s Diary, ii. 437. He repeated this point the following day when he argued that the second chamber had been created to be ‘a balance’, not a new House of Lords.98Burton’s Diary, ii. 442. That the Commons was getting bogging down in such disputes was why Cromwell dissolved this Parliament later that same day. During these brief few weeks Cock had also been named to the committee on the registration of births, marriages and deaths (22 Jan.) and he had made one report on 30 January from the trade committee on transporting fish in foreign bottoms.99CJ vii. 581a, 590a.

In his capacity as an admiralty judge, Cock walked in Oliver Cromwell’s funeral procession on 23 November.100Burton’s Diary, ii. 526. He was also one of those entrusted with presenting Great Yarmouth’s loyal address to the new lord protector, Richard Cromwell*.101Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 401. On 5 January 1659 the Great Yarmouth corporation re-elected him to sit in the new Parliament.102Norf. RO, Y/C 19/7, f. 318v. Cock was then appointed to administer to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector at the beginning of the session.103CJ vii. 593a.

His first contribution to proceedings during this Parliament came on 1 February when he suggested that they should not pursue their discussion of the protracted Berkshire election dispute from the previous Parliament any further.104Burton’s Diary, iii. 20. Like many of his colleagues, he was probably exasperated by the way in which Henry Neville* was keeping up that dispute only in order to score political points against the government. Before long, others were reviving the old arguments about the Other House for much the same purpose. Cock was equally unimpressed. When Hesilrige demanded on 18 February that they should debate its status, he was ‘taken down’ by Cock.105Burton’s Diary, iii. 341. But if the subject of the Other House was to be debated by others, Cock was only too happy to give his own views. Speaking on 22 February, he alluded back to the debates on the Commons’ right to approve the members of the Other House. Despite the fact that he had been present at the time and had spoken in those debates, he pretended to be mystified as to how the Commons had given up its right of veto over the lord protector’s nominations. He went on to declared that, ‘I am very well satisfied that there should be another House; but not with your question, that the persons should first be considered’.106Burton’s Diary, iii. 418. What he appeared to be saying was that he would prefer the Commons to have the right of veto over any nominations made by the lord protector but that giving the Commons the right of nomination would be a step too far.

On 28 March the Commons was still preoccupied with the legitimacy of the Other House. Cock then made a lengthy speech that made full use of his historical learning. This was recorded by both Burton and Guybon Goddard*, who attributed it to ‘Coll. Cocks’ and ‘Coll. Cox’ respectively.107Add. 15863, f. 31v; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 149. Earlier in this debate Arthur Onslow* had called on them to look to Magna Carta. Cock thought otherwise. His main point was that the House of Lords had been abolished in 1649 and should not now be revived. However he was prepared to accept a nominated second chamber. As in his speech on 22 February, he then dealt with the question about how such a chamber should be nominated. This time he suggested that the Commons could select the names from a list proposed by the lord protector, or, conversely, that the lord protector could select the names from a list proposed by the Commons. Once again, he alluded back to the debates in June 1657. He now suggested that his prediction that some of those who had agreed that the Commons could relinquish its powers of approval had done so because they had hoped to be summoned to sit in the Other House had proved to be correct.108Burton’s Diary, iii. 512-13; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 149. Although his support was qualified, Cock was, in the context of these debates, broadly in favour of the existing constitutional arrangements.

That support was also affirmed on 9 March during the debate on the rights of the Scottish and Irish MPs to sit at Westminster. Cock declared that the Instrument of Government and the Humble Petition and Advice were sufficient authority for them to do so.109Burton’s Diary, iv. 108. Again, there was a hint that he thought that the House was wasting its time on constitutional irrelevancies. Similarly, on 5 April he clearly thought that Hesilrige was up to no good when he had incorrectly claimed that the Speaker, Chaloner Chute I*, had recovered from his recent illness.110Burton’s Diary, iv. 347. But even if Cock thought that this Parliament was being unproductive, he is unlikely to have believed that its dissolution under duress later that month was at all justified. Nevertheless, on 18 May, acting on the recommendations of the committee of safety, the Rump confirmed the appointments of Cock and the other admiralty and probate judges.111CJ vii. 657a, 658b; A. and O.

Cock played little part in public life after the Restoration, not least because he lost his judicial offices and because he was soon removed as recorder of Great Yarmouth and as steward of Norwich.112Norf. RO, Y/C 19/7, f. 362; Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 219. He was able to offer £10 towards the 1662 voluntary gift to the king.113Frere MSS (Norf. Rec. Soc. i.), 84. In 1664 he witnessed the will of Lady Francis Hobart, widow of Sir John Hobart*, 2nd bt.114B. Cozens-Hardy, ‘The Norwich Chapelfield House estate’, Norf. Arch. xxvii, 370. Meeting him by chance in the Strand in 1668, Samuel Pepys† was embarrassed that Cock, ‘formerly a very great man and my father’s customer whom I have carried clothes to’, now had the demeanour of ‘a poor sorry sneak’ and that he had been ‘a man of mighty height and authority in his time but now signifies nothing.’115Pepys, Diary, ix. 113.

By 1679 Cock could refer to his ‘weak condition’.116Bodl. Tanner 41, f. 26. In December 1681 he prepared his will. He prefaced it with the claim that ‘as a man and as a Christian’, he had drawn it ‘in the most prudent and impartial manner I can’, for, doubtless thinking back to his years as a probate judge, he was ‘desirous to avoid future controversies knowing by manifold experiences how little care or shrift there is for ought that concern the soul, heaven and eternity’. Hoping only for salvation he requested a private burial, without vain funeral pomp. His lands in Norfolk and Yorkshire were bequeathed to his wife and his younger daughter, Sarah, who had married Robert Nightingale.117Norf. RO, Norwich consistory ct., original will, 1682, no. 32. Within days, Cock died. He was buried at St Stephen’s church in Norwich on 5 January 1682.118St Stephen, Norwich par. reg. He was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.