Dante, Purgatory, xxix. (1308).

CO’ANOCOT’ZIN (5 syl.), King of the Az’tecas.  Slain in battle by
Madoc.—­Southey, Madoc (1805).

CO’ATEL, daughter of Acul’hua, a priest of the Az’tecas, and wife of Lincoya.  Lincoya, being doomed for sacrifice, fled for refuge to Madoc, the Welsh Prince, who had recently landed on the North American coast, and was kindly treated by him.  This gave Coatel a sympathetic interest in the White strangers, and she was not backward in showing it.  Then, when young Hoel was kidnapped, and confined in a cavern to starve to death, Coatel visited him and took him food.  Again, when Prince Madoc was entrapped, she contrived to release him, and assisted the prince to carry off young Hoel.  After the defeat of the Az’tecas by the White strangers, the chief priest declared that some one had proved a traitor, and resolved to discover who it was by handing round a cup, which he said would be harmless to the innocent, but death to the guilty.  When it was handed to Coatel, she was so frightened that she dropped down dead.  Her father stabbed himself, and “fell upon his child,” and when Lincoya heard thereof, he flung himself down from a steep precipice on to the rocks below.—­Southey, Madoc (1805).

COBB (Ephraim), in Cromwell’s troop.—­Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (time, Commonwealth).

COBBLER-POET (The), Hans Sachs, of Nuremberg. (See TWELVE WISE MASTERS).

COBHAM (Eleanor), wife of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and aunt of King Henry VI., compelled to do penance barefoot in a sheet in London, and after that to live in the Isle of Man in banishment, for “sorcery.”  In 2 Henry VI., Shakespeare makes Queen Margaret “box her ears,” but this could not be, as Eleanor was banished three years before Margaret came to England.

  Stand forth, dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloster’s wife ... 
  You, madam ... despoiled of your honor ... 
  Shall, after three days’ open penance done,
  Live in your country, here in banishment,
  With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man.

Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act ii. sc. 3 (1591).

COCK OF WESTMINSTER (The).  Castell, a shoemaker, was so called from his very early hours.  He was one of the benefactors of Christ’s Hospital (London).

COCKER (Edward), published a useful treatise on arithmetic, in the reign of Charles II., which had a prodigious success, and has given rise to the proverb, “According to Cocker” (1632-1675).

COCKLE (Sir John), the miller of Mansfield, and keeper of Sherwood Forest.  Hearing a gun fired one night, he went into the forest, expecting to find poachers, and seized the king (Henry VIII.), who had been hunting and had got separated from his courtiers.  When the miller discovered that his captor was not a poacher, he offered him a night’s lodging.  Next day the courtiers were brought to Cockle’s house by under-keepers, to be examined as poachers, and it was then discovered that the miller’s guest was the king.  The “merry monarch” knighted the miller, and settled on him 1000 marks a year.—­R.  Dodsley, The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737).