Cox died in July 1581; a monument erected to his memory twenty years later in Ely cathedral was defaced, owing, it was said, to his evil repute. Strype (Whitgift, i. 2) gives Cox's hot temper and marriage as reasons why he was not made archbishop in 1583 in preference to Whitgift, who had been his chaplain; but Cox had been dead two years in 1583. His first wife's name is unknown; she was the mother of his five children, of whom Joanna married John Parker, the eldest son of Archbishop Matthew Parker. His second wife was Jane Auder, the widow of William Turner, the botanist and Dean of Wells Cathedral. One of his grandsons, Richard, moved to Ireland in about 1600, and was the ancestor of the Cox Baronets of Dunmanway, County Cork.
