[Illustration] There are several places called Cotton, and
antiquaries have doubted from which of them the present family is
called. The house usually assigned is that of Cotton, near Wem, in
Shropshire, where Sir Hugh Cotton was seated in the reign of Edward
I., and whose descendant, Roger Cotton, acquired the estate of
Alkington, in the same county, by marriage of the heiress, in the
reign of Richard II. He was the ancestor of Sir George Cotton,
grantee of Combermere after the Dissolution in 1540, from whom the
present family directly descend. Younger branch, extinct in the male
line, but represented in the female line by R. H. Cotton of Etwall,
co. Derby, Esq.
MSS. of the late Mr. Joseph Morris of Shrewsbury. See a different
account of this family in Ormerod, iii. 212; Blakeway's Sheriffs of
Shropshire, p. 104; and Wotton's Baronetage, iii. 611.
ARMS.--_Azure, a chevron between three hawk's lures, or
cotton-hanks, argent_.
Present Representative, Wellington Henry Cotton, 2nd Viscount
Combermere.