Francis Coxe

Francis Coxe (also called Fraunces Cox; ) was an English astrologer and quack physician. He was tried for sorcery in 1561 and severely punished, and his Unfained Retractation was published in a contemporary broadside. Coxe subsequently published what Edward Heron-Allen calls "a grovelling and terror-stricken pamphlet", entitled A Short Treatise declaring the Detestable Wickednesse of Magicall Sciences, as Necromancie, Coniurations of Spirits, Curiouse Astrologie, and such lyke (London, 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". 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. The dates of his birth and death are not known.