He was the eldest son and heir of Sir John Cockburn of Clerkington and Helen Maitland, and was born around 1565 at Clerkington House near Haddington, East Lothian. He trained as a lawyer and became a judge. He accompanied James VI to Denmark, and gave money to the skipper of the Scottish ships when the king visited the dockyard at Copenhagen on 3 March 1590. In November 1591 he was elected a Senator of the College of Justice being elected at the same time as Andrew Wemyss, Lord Myrecairnie. In 1591 Cockburn was admitted as a Lord of Session. He was the Secretary of State to James VI from 1591 to 1596. In this capacity he was directly involved in the private communications between James and Queen Elizabeth I in the final years of the queen's reign. On 15 September 1594 he was in London where he met the queen and kissed her hand. He was accompanied by James Bellenden and George Douglas of Longniddry, a servant of Anne of Denmark. On 12 November 1594 Robert Cecil gave him a letter from the queen to carry back to James VI. He was given £2,000 as a gift for James VI. Elizabeth let it be known that the money should be taken to Scotland, and not spent in London, as had happened in previous years. He passed £680 Scots from this sum to the goldsmith and royal financier Thomas Foulis for the king's use. The rest of the money was sent to the Duke of Lennox for the wages of his soldiers in the north of Scotland. The cost of Cockburn's embassy was met with £1,000 Scots from the Danish dowry, which had been invested with the town council of Haddington. In 1595 Cockburn's trip to England to see the queen is mentioned in a letter from James to Elizabeth. In July the Chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane wrote to the Earl of Essex, about their future "diligent intercourse of intelligence" involving Cockburn and Anthony Bacon. Essex replied that he wrote only with the queen's knowledge, and they would be happy to receive letters from Maitland or Cockburn. In May 1596 Sir Richard was replaced as Secretary of State by John Lindsay of Balcarres, one of the eight Octavians who were appointed by James in January of that same year as commissioners to reform the financial processes of the Scottish government. On 14 November he returned to the Privy Council the original signed copy of a letter which Elizabeth had written on 2 June 1586, offering annual gifts of money for the king's expenses. In 1598 Sir Richard regained the office of Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, a position that had been taken over temporarily by John Lindsay. In 1610 he was confirmed as a member in the new Privy Council and at the same time appointed to the Court of High Commission for church affairs. But in February 1626 he was removed from the bench as a result of the resolution by the new king, Charles I, that no noblemen nor officers of the state be simultaneously members of the judiciary. He died in October 1627 in Haddington.
Family
In about 1611 Sir Richard married his distant cousin, Margaret Cockburn, the daughter of Sir William Cockburn of Langton. The Cockburns were an important land-owning family in the Scottish Lowlands since the early part of the 14th century. The marriage brought together the wealthy Langton and politically influential Clerkington branches of that family. Sir Richard and Margaret had a daughter, born in March 1612 in Edinburgh; a son Patrick, born in March 1613 who died in infancy; and a second son Patrick who was born in November 1614. Sir Richard was succeeded as Laird of Clerkington by his son Patrick. Church records confirm that Sir Richard had at least seven illegitimate children, all born in Edinburgh, with one or more unrecorded women. Jeane was born in April 1599. Anna was born in March 1604. Johne was born in April 1605. Helene was born in December 1606. Richard was born in July 1608. William was born in August 1609. Issobel was born in December 1610. In 1620 Jeane married James Pringle, the 5th Laird of Torwoodlee.
