Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Cockburn, Patrick
COCKBURN, PATRICK (1678–1749), Scottish divine, eldest son of John Cockburn, D.D. [q. v.], was born in 1678 at Udny, Aberdeenshire. It is not known whether lie accompanied his father to France as a child, or where he was educated, but he was in Holland in 1705, for on 17 Aug. he received the degree of M.A. from the Edinburgh University, he being then 'in Batavia agens.' Early in 1708 he married Catharine Trotter [see Cockburn, Catherine], and is said to have shortly afterwards obtained the perpetual curacy of Nayland, Suffolk, but he was probably only a temporary curate-in-charge. He went to Nayland in June 1708. The sole reference to him in the Nayland registers is the entry of the baptism on 13 April 1712 of 'Mary, daughter of Patrick Cockburn, curate, and Catharine his wife.' From Nayland he removed to London, where he was curate at St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street, but soon lost this employment through refusing the oath of abjuration in 1714 (he is not mentioned in the list at the end of Kettlewell's 'Life,' 1718, 8vo). For a time he made a scanty living by teaching Latin at a school in Chancery Lane. On 29 Nov. 1726 (having taken the oath) he was appointed minister of St. Paul's episcopal chapel, Aberdeen (erected 1722). He resigned this incumbency on 1 June 1739. Soon after his Aberdeen settlement he had been preferred to the vicarage of Long Horsley, Northumberland, but did not reside until compelled to do so in 1737. He died on 4 Jan. 1748-9, and was buried on 7 Jan. at Long Horsley. He published : 1. 'A Penitential Office,' &c., 1721, 8vo. 2. 'The Duty and Benefit of Praying for our Governors,' &c., 1728, 8vo (sermon from 1 Tim. ii. 1-4, on accession of George II). 3. 'The Lawfulness and Duty of Praying for our present King and Governor,' &c., 1735, 8vo (in reply to a pamphlet criticising No. 2; there were later pamphlets in the controversy, which Cockburn does not seem to have answered). 4. 'An Enquiry into the Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic Deluge,' &c., 1750, 8vo (defends the universality of the flood). He published also, according to Birch, in the 'Weekly Miscellany,' a 'defence of prime ministers in the character of Joseph.' But Cockburn's chief service to literature was his edition (the 6th) in 1726, 8vo, of Henry Scougall's 'Life of God in the Soul of Man,' with brief preface, dated from St. John's, Clerkenwell, and the addition of Scougall's 'Nine Discourses' (all, but two, previously unprinted) and the funeral sermon by George Garden, D.D. (then first printed), of much moment for Scougall's biography. Garden was Cockburn's uncle, and Scougall his father's first cousin. Cockburn's edition was reprinted, 1735, 8vo, 'the second edition.'
[Birch's Life of Catharine Cockburn, prefixed to her Works, 1751, i. xxxiii sq.; also Works, ii. 206; Watt's Bibl. Brit. 1824; Cat. of Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, 1873, vol. ii.; information from the late David Laing, from Rev. S. Clark, of St. Paul's Chapel, Aberdeen, and from the vicars (in 1873) of Nayland and Long Horsley.]