William Cocke (1672–1720)

William Cocke was prominent Virginian politician in the early 1700s and was among the first university trained doctors in Virginia. Born in Sudbury, Suffolk County, England in 1672, he graduated from Queens’ College, University of Cambridge in 1693. He initially arrived in Virginia in 1710 serving as Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood's personal physician in Williamsburg, Virginia. On June 10, 1712, Spotswood took advantage of the departure of former governor Edmund Jenings, and made Cocke secretary of the colony. In August 1713, the Virginia leadership appointed Cocke to fill the vacant seat on the Virginia Governor's Council. In 1714, Cocke was one of three Privy Council members who helped the House of Burgesses draft a bill congratulating the new king George I on gaining the throne of Great Britain. From the summer of 1716 to the spring of 1718, Cocke was London, in part to address the Board of Trade on behalf of the colony. On October 22, 1720, Coocke was addressing a session of the General Court in Williamsburg and collapsed on to William Byrd II and died. He was buried under the floor of the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. His wife Elisabeth Catesby Cocke was the sister of English naturalist Mark Catesby. After Cocke's death, she eventually remarried John Holloway, Speaker of the House of Burgesses