If ever there was a case where armchair research fails to deliver, this must be it. To properly understand who Dr. Daniel Coxe was, I need to go to London. But that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I must make do with what I can get my hands on, and believe me, it is not enough. Not even Samuel Pepys can help me, for he was no longer writing his diary by this time.
England
The Radical Daniel Coxe
After a few years spent mixing with the virtuosi in London and playing with volatile salts in his laboratory, Daniel Coxe bethought himself to get a wife. He married Rebecca Coldham, the daughter of John Coldham, Esq. of Tooting Graveney, London. I’m not kidding; Tooting Graveney, actually has its own page in Wikipedia. It is considered a suburb of London, on the south side of the Thames, and was probably quite rural in the 1670s. John Coldham was an Alderman of London and warden of the Grocers Company, from which I conclude that he was a successful merchant with political connections, an ideal father-in-law for an ambitious man.
“The Learned and Intelligent Dr. Daniel Coxe”
A treatise published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions by Georgii Wedelii on Volatile Salts in 1673 was followed by a notice from the editor, which read:
“So much of this Author; whose way not being here made out and declared, we hope, a Learned and very known Member of the R. Society, Doctor Daniel Coxe, will shortly supply the world with that defect, he being certainly and experimentally master of a sure and easy way of extracting the volatile Salt out of all sorts of Plants.”