Cobden was a poet at an early age; some of his later verse celebrated the memory of King Charles I, the royal martyr, and Queen Anne, founder of the bounty to the clergy. Cobden was better known, however, for his topical sermons. A high-church clergyman, he quickly accumulated a number of preferments, eventually becoming a court preacher upon his appointment as a chaplain-in-ordinary to King George II in 1730. Though he was professedly anti-Jacobite and praised the Hanoverian regime in some of his verse, his sermon 'A persuasive to chastity’ offended the king and cost Cobden his position.