COKER (EAST),a parish in the hundred of HOUNDSBOROUGH-BERWICK-and-COKER, county of SOMERSET, 2 miles (S.S.W.) from Yeovil, containing, with the hamlet of North Coker, 1103 inhabitants. The living is a vicarage, irr the archdeaconry of Wells, and diocese of Bath and Wells, rated in the king's books at £ 12. 6. 3., and in the patronage of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is a neat cruciform edifice, with a tower rising from the intersection: near it are almshouses endowed with an estate at Whitchurch in Dorsetshire,for the maintenance of twelve poor widows. In a field in this parish the foundations of a Roman building were discovered in 1753; one of the rooms had a beautiful tesselated pavement, representing persons lying on a couch, beneath which were found a hypocaust, several coffins, burnt bones, &c. Dampier, the celebrated circumnavigator, was born here, in 1652.