The place of Leonard Cox in the history of English rhetorical literature is assured as a result of his authorship of The Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke (1530"), the first rhetorical treatise to be published in the English language. The Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke forms the apex of a literary career spent first as a scholar and teacher in eastern Europe and later, after Cox's return to England, as an active proponent of the Reformation. His life may be regarded as a paradigm of the change in outlook that divided the European intellectual community in the first half of the sixteenth century, as the res publica litterarum (republic of letters) broke up into mutually antagonistic groups based on religious allegiance.

According to the Athenae Oxonienses of the seventeenth-century antiquarian Anthony à Wood, Leonard Cox was born in Monmouthshire, Wales, the second son of Laurence Cox and his wife...