Life

His father Thomas Cooper was a solicitor practising at Lewes

Lewes

Lewes is the county town of East Sussex, England and historically of all of Sussex. It is a civil parish and is the centre of the Lewes local government district. The settlement has a history as a bridging point and as a market town, and today as a communications hub and tourist-oriented town...

; his mother was Lucy Elizabeth Durrant. He was born in Lewes on 10 January 1812, and was educated at the grammar school of Lewes. When 15 years old he became an articled clerk to his father. In Michaelmas term of 1832 he was admitted attorney and solicitor. In the following year he gave evidence on the parish register

Parish register

A parish register is a handwritten volume, normally kept in a parish church or deposited within a county record office or alternative archive repository, in which details of baptisms, marriages and burials are recorded.-History:...

s of Sussex before a committee of the House of Commons.

In 1837 he came to live in London, and attached himself to the parliamentary staff of the Morning Chronicle

Morning Chronicle

The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

and The Times. The Duke of Norfolk gave him honorific posts as steward for the leet court of Lewes borough and auditor of Skelton Castle in Cleveland

Cleveland, England

Cleveland is an area in the north east of England. Its name means literally "cliff-land", referring to its hilly southern areas, which rise to nearly...

.

He was a member of the Reform Club

Reform Club

The Reform Club is a gentlemen's club on the south side of Pall Mall, in central London. Originally for men only, it changed to include the admission of women in 1981. In 2011 the subscription for membership of the Reform Club as a full UK member is £1,344.00, with a one-off entrance fee of £875.00...

, and from 1837 acted as its solicitor; he also was solicitor to the vestry of St. Pancras (20 December 1858). In 1872 he was stricken with an attack of paralysis, but he lingered three years longer, dying at 81 Guilford Street, Russell Square, on 28 December 1875. He never married. Two of his brothers predeceased him; a third, with an only sister, outlived him.

Works

When Thomas Walker Horsfield

Thomas Walker Horsfield

Rev. Thomas Walker Horsfield FSA , was an English Nonconformist minister, topographer, and historian best known for his works The History and Antiquities of Lewes and The History, Antiquities and Topography of the County of Sussex .-Life:He was the eldest of six children of James Horsfield and Ann...

 undertook the task of compiling a history of Sussex, he found a helper in Cooper. The "Parliamentary History of the County of Sussex and of the several Boroughs and Cinque Ports therein" was Cooper's first publication (1834). It dealt with incidents of political intrigue and corruption. His next work was ‘A Glossary of the Provincialisms in use in Sussex. It was superseded by collections of William Douglas Parish. "Sussex Poets" was published in 1842, and had originally been delivered as a lecture at Hastings

Hastings

Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....

.

In the muniment room at Skelton Cooper discovered the "Seven Letters written by Sterne and his Friends", which he edited for private circulation in 1844. Cooper contributed articles to the Sussex Archæological Collections, and for many years edited its annual volume. His contributions to the society's transactions on "Hastings" and "The Oxenbridges of Brede Place, Sussex, and Boston, Massachusetts", and his articles in the eighth volume of its collections, were published separately.

For the Camden Society

Camden Society

The Camden Society, named after the English antiquary and historian William Camden, was founded in 1838 in London to publish early historical and literary materials, both unpublished manuscripts and new editions of rare printed books....

 he edited:

• "Lists of Foreign Protestants in England, 1618–88",
• "Savile Correspondence, Letters to and from Henry Savile",
• "Expenses of the Judges of Assize on Western and Oxford Circuits, 1596–1601", and
• "The Trelawny Papers".

For the Shakespeare Society he edited Nicholas Udall

Nicholas Udall

Nicholas Udall was an English playwright, cleric, pederast and schoolmaster, the author of Ralph Roister Doister, generally regarded as the first comedy written in the English language.-Biography:...

's comedy of Ralph Roister Doister

Ralph Roister Doister

Ralph Roister Doister is a comic play by Nicholas Udall, generally regarded as the first comedy to be written in the English language.The date of its composition is disputed, but the balance of opinion suggests that it was written in about 1553, when Udall was a teacher in London, and was intended...

and the tragedy of Gorboduc

Gorboduc

Gorboduc was a legendary king of the Britons as accounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was married to Judon. At an old age, he became senile and his sons, Ferrex and Porrex, feuded over who would take over the kingdom...

. To the Reliquary he communicated an article on ‘Anthony Babington and the Conspiracy of 1586,’ printed separately in 1862.

Many of his papers appeared in the transactions of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society, one was in the Surrey Archæological Society proceedings, and a paper on "John Cade's followers in Kent" was contributed to the Kent Society, and published as an appendix to Benjamin Brogden Orridge's "Illustrations of Jack Cade's Rebellion".

Cooper was one of the earliest contributors to Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...

, and a frequent writer in Archæologia. He compiled a history of Winchelsea in 1850, and wrote for vols. viii. and xxiii. of the ‘Sussex Archæological Collection’ two further papers on the same subject. Mark Anthony Lower was indebted to him for information published in the work on "Sussex Worthies".