Coxe has to be distinguished from a namesake from St. Saviour’s, Southwark, who became librarian of the Middle Temple in 1642.
Coxe appears only once in the surviving records of the 1625 Parliament, at the second reading of the unsuccessful petty larceny bill on 6 Aug., when he moved that Southwark should be included in its provisions.
Coxe was named to nine committees in the third Caroline Parliament. In the first session he was appointed to consider a bill for the suppression of unlicensed alehouses (17 Apr. 1628). On 13 June he was instructed to examine petitions from the Somers Island planters, currency exchangers and the Goldsmiths’ Company. He was also named to examine further petitions from the officers of the custom house (20 June), and ‘from the countries’ against the toll on malt levied by the Corporation of London (25 June).
Alarmed by the Crown’s military preparations, on 6 June 1628 Coxe spoke several times in committee of the whole House on the heads of the Remonstrance. He alleged that he had evidence from ‘divers merchants at the Exchange’ about the bringing in of foreign cavalry. He passed on the report that ‘£100 a day is the charge of these horses, and £40 a day for the ships that lie to bring them home’, and later alleged that Philip Burlamachi ‘has raised ordnance forth to fly back into our faces, and brings in horses to kill us here’.
In the 1629 session Coxe was added to the committee appointed to look into the case of John Rolle* (3 February). Six days later he was among those ordered to consider the merchants’ petition against a patent concerning the carriage of mercantile correspondence. He was also named to committees to consider bills to confirm the Somers Island plantation (10 Feb.) and for the increase of trade (11 February).
Coxe drew up his will on 1 July 1633, though it was not signed and witnessed for another couple of months. He left 40s. to the minister of St. Olave’s, where he asked to be buried, and to the puritan minister of St. Saviour’s, Nicholas Morton, whom he called ‘my good comforter in health and sickness’. He left the same sum to his ‘careful and painful physician’ Dr. Fludd, presumably Robert Fludd, who had been involved in the rosicrucian debate. He further bequeathed £5, or a cup, to the Clothworkers’, £5 to the poor of St. Olave’s and £5 for the repair of the church, the two last bequests on condition ‘that my colours may hang up in some convenient place of the church’. Coxe had been a member of the London Artillery Company and was probably an officer in Southwark’s trained bands, as he willed that ‘all the garden men and other of my band do accompany my corpse with black ribbon as a soldier to the ground’. In addition he gave £25 towards ‘the building of the Armoury ... provided my arms be set up in glass’. This was presumably connected with proposals to build an armoury at the ‘martial yard’ situated at Horsleydown used by the Southwark militia for training. Coxe died sometime before 7 Nov. 1633, when his will was proved. None of his descendants are known to have sat in Parliament.