John Manly, and on 3 February 1831 matriculated at The Queen's College, Oxford, as Michel exhibitioner; in 1834 he was elected scholar.
He married in 1852 Edith, a daughter of James Cowles Prichard, and moved to Clifton, Bristol, where he spent the remainder of his life with the exception of a year when he was in charge of Codrington College in Barbados.
His major work was his edition of Gilbert Burnet's History of the Reformation, published in seven volumes by the Clarendon Press in 1864–65.
The series Records of the Reformation issued by the Clarendon Press in 1871 was stopped at the year 1535, because of poor sales: and Pocock's collections remained mostly in manuscript, though some were published in Troubles connected with the Prayer-Book of 1549 (Camden Society, 1884).
[1] Pocock also edited, for the Camden Society, Nicholas Harpsfield's Treatise of the Pretended Divorce of Catherine of Aragon (1878).