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Richard Cosin (died 1596) was an English jurist. He became prominent as an ecclesiastical lawyer in the service of Archbishop John Whitgift, active against the in the Church of England.
He was chancellor of the diocese of Worcester in 1582, where Whitgift was bishop. His name appears on the marriage bond of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.Samuel Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life (1987), p. 77. He became Dean of the Arches in 1583.
Whitgift made him his Vicar-General of the diocese of Canterbury in 1583, and Dean of the Arches in 1590. Cosin also had duties as a censor of publications.
He entered Parliament as the MP for Downton, Wiltshire in 1584, and was then elected for Hindon, Wiltshire in 1586 and again for Downton in 1589.
In the major confrontation of the 1590s between Anglicans and Thomas Cartwright and his Puritan and presbyterian allies, Cosin with Matthew Sutcliffe for the church lawyers faced the common lawyers Richard Beale and James Morice. Morice attacked the ex officio oath, which Cosin staunchly defended. He argued from the existence, in medieval understanding, of many exceptions to the requirement of an accuser.Donna B. Hamilton, Theological Writing and Religious Polemic, p. 595 in Michael Hattaway (editor), A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (2003).R. H. Helmholz, The Privilege and the ius commune: The Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, p. 23 in R. H. Helmholz, Charles M. Gray, John H. Langbein, Eben Moglen, Albert W. Alschuler, The Privilege Against Self-incrimination: Its Origins and Development (1997).
His 1592 pamphlet Conspiracie, for Pretended Reformation: viz. Presbyteriall Discipline exploited the scare after the 1591 plot of William Hacket, Edmund Coppinger, and Henry Arthington. Cosin noted in it that the presbyterian notion of discipline included the ideas of resistance to bad magistrates, and deposition of kings.Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (1969 edition), p. 224. It also contains discussion, relating to Hacket, showing contemporary definitions of degrees of insanity. Mental Health History Timeline
An apologie for sundrie proceedings by jurisdiction ecclesiastical (1593) is his major work. He expressed the views that Magna Carta implied that the English monarchy did not have absolute power, but that it had no application to ecclesiastical jurisdiction.Alan Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450-1642 (2006), p. 131 and 139.
He supported the education of William Barlow,Ralph Anthony Houlbrooke, James VI and I: Ideas, Authority, and Government (2006), p. 68. his biographer (1598).
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