George William Cox

He was the eldest son of the six children of Captain George Hamilton Cox (died 1841), of the East India Company's service, and Eliza Kearton, daughter of John Horne, planter, of St. Vincent in the West Indies.

[1] A brother, Colonel Edmund Henry Cox of the royal marine artillery, fired the first shot against Sevastopol in the Crimean War.

After serving a curacy at Salcombe Regis, he resigned owing to ill-health, and in 1851 accepted the post of English chaplain at Gibraltar.

[2] Cox supported Bishop Colenso in his stand for liberal criticism of the scriptures and in his struggle over his episcopal status in South Africa.

In 1880, Cox was appointed Vicar of Bekesbourne by A. C. Tait, archbishop of Canterbury, and from 1881 to 1897, he was rector of the crown living of Scrayingham, Yorkshire.

In 1886, he was chosen Bishop of Natal by the adherents of Colenso, but was refused consecration by Archbishop Benson owing to his election being unacceptable to the high church party.

An article in the Edinburgh Review (January 1858)[6] on Milman's History of Latin Christianity[7] illustrates the development of his views on broad church lines.

)[citation needed] His other works includes studies of mythology, and histories of the Greeks and Persians, the Crusades, the establishment of British India, and of England and the English people, as well as a book of "family prayer" based on Jeremy Taylor and other 17th century divines.