COGGS, John (fl.1712-1749) — London
Mathematical instrument maker, known for a full range of instruments. A globe produced in conjunction with Nathaniel Hill (see BME 2011) is recorded. An early trade-card in BM notes that he “makes and sells all sorts of mathematical instruments in silver, brass, ivory or wood, very curious, and true graduated both for sea and land, with books of their use”, going on to specify sectors, scales, compasses, quadrants, theodolites, circumferentors, nocturnals, books, charts, etc., etc., and including “globes, spheres, maps”, etc. Co-published Edmund Stone, ‘The description, nature and general use, of the sector and plain-scale’ 1721, with Thomas Wright and Thomas Heath (see BME 2011).
Thought to have been born in London, and possibly a son of John Coggs, a goldsmith with premises on the Strand. He became free of the Pewterers’ Company by patrimony in Oct 1712. Initially employed by the instrument-maker John Rowley. The Globe & Sun address was also associated with Richard Cushee, Elizabeth Cushee, and her brother, William Wyeth (see BME 2011), who was apprenticed to Coggs in 1725. Coggs’ Fleet Street premises were initially on the south side of Fleet Street, on the eastern corner of Hercules Pillars Alley, diagonally opposite the St. Dunstan, but from 1722 to 1748 were across the street on the north side, between Flying Horse Court and Clifford’s Inn Lane — premises which he appears to have shared with Richard Cushee and then Elizabeth Cushee. He was in partnership with Wyeth from about 1733 to 1740 — they were referred to as “ingenious mathematical instrument makers” in Robert Shirtcliffe, ‘The theory and practice of gauging’ 1740. Coggs was also closely associated with Rowley’s successor Thomas Wright (see BME 2011). His final entry in local land tax records in 1749 places him in a new shop a few doors to the east, directly under the church. The business then appears to have been taken over by Nathaniel Hill (see BME 2011). Coggs is thought to have become the parish clerk at that point, probably living with Hill, and to be the John Coggs of Chancery Lane buried at St. Dunstan 4 May 1757.
The Globe & Sun over against St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street — 1716-1720
Fleet Street — 1722-1748
Under St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street — 1749
Apprentices: Thomas Woodcock 1718 (£8.8s); Robert Greaves 1719; John Greaves 1722; William Wyeth (see BME 2011) 1725; Charles Johnson 1730 (£21).
BBTI. BM. Clifton. EWP. Taylor (1954). Taylor (1966). Webster.