Francis Coxe

[2] Francis Coxe, a quack physician, who attained some celebrity in the sixteenth century, is best known by a curious volume of receipts entitled De oleis, unguentis, emplastris, etc.

[1][2] His practices having attracted considerable attention, he was summoned before the privy council on a charge of sorcery, and, having been severely punished, made a public confession of his "employment of certayne sinistral and divelysh artes" at the Pillory in Cheapside on 25 June 1561.

[1] On 7 July following John Awdeley issued a broadside entitled The unfained Retractation of Fraunces Cox, a copy of which later entered the library of the Society of Antiquaries.

[3][4] Coxe subsequently published what Edward Heron-Allen calls "a grovelling and terror-stricken pamphlet",[5] entitled A Short Treatise declaring the Detestable Wickednesse of Magicall Sciences, as Necromancie, Coniurations of Spirits, Curiouse Astrologie, and such lyke (London, Jhon [sic] Alde, n.d., black letter, 12mo), written, as he says in the preface thereto, "for that I have myself been an offender in these most detestable sciences, against whome I have compilyd this worke".

[5] Coxe may also have written Prognostication, n.d., an almanac, which survives in a single copy on the back of a ballad in the British Library.