As Magistrate:

Sir Richard Cox, 1757, Dunmanway. Subscriber James Simon Irish Coinage 1749.   On 1741, famine, 500 dead in his parish, ‘burying the dead used to be one of the most religious acts among the Irish is now a burden’.  The Papists thought they are bad members of this society are yet better than  none.  Cox, Richard, Sir., Dunmanway, succeeded by his son, Rev. Sir Michael – (CC 30/1/1766)

Francis McNamee had a piece in ancestry.com in 2010 taken from Gentleman’s Magazine Vol 19 October 1749 page 463 in relation to Sir Richard Cox and Dunmanway:

Submission from the Remberances, October 14th:

This writer quotes a faying of Themistocles the Athenian, Put but a poor and languid city under my care, and I will render it rich and flourishing; Which kind of ability; is what alone. he says, constitutes a great and able politician. Sir Richard Cox of Ireland in the year of 1733, came to the possession of a large, fruitful but uncultivated tract of land, inhabited by a race of beggars, grown by habitual wretchedness so hardened that tho’, no sensible of the smart, they were not ashamed to prefer hunger and idleness to labour and competency. He therefore, directed his thoughts to remedy this evil; and wisely concluded that nothing but the establishment of a staple manufacture on the premises would answer the purpose.

For very sufficient reasons he chose the linen; and having procured a quantity of flax seed in 1735, prevailed with them to sow it and by dint of perseverance, and a series of admirable expedients to rectify his own mistakes, to render sloth infamous, to excite emulation, to increase his colony, if it may be so called, and to interest all the passions of those concerned in its success, he at last fixed it on such an establishment, as, if the same laws are observed, bids fair to to perpetual.

Already the little town has undergone a wonderful change; for whereas, in 1735, it contained ay most but 50 houses, many of them only fit for beggars, it now contains 117 houses, whose inhabitants are fully employed and take pleasure in being so.

This is true patriotism and policy united; a sphere of ambition, that every gentleman may follow innocently; laudably, and profitably.

Sir Richard Cox introduced families from the North of Ireland to assist names such as McGivern (McGovern from Leitrim/Fermanagh), Maguire, Pattison and McMullan among others