Such a task could not fail to be a welcome one; and COTTON found no lack

of pertinent evidence. The bent and habit of his mind were always

methodical. He begins his abstract of the records by tabulating his

argument. Precedency, he says, must have respect either to the nation or

to the ruler of the nation. A kingdom must rank either (1) according to

its antiquity, or (2) according to ‘the eminency of the throne royal,’

by which phrase he means the complete unity of the dominion under one

supreme ruler. On the first title to precedency he observes that it may

be based either upon the date of national independence, or upon that of

the national recognition of Christianity. He claims for England that it

was a monarchy at least four hundred and sixty years before Castile

became one; that Christianity had then been established in it, without

break or interruption, for a thousand years; [Sidenote: _Cottoni

Posthuma_, pp. 76, 77.] whereas in Spain Christianity was ‘defaced with

Moorish Mahumetisme,’ until the expulsion of the Moors by FERDINAND,

little more than a century before the time at which he was writing.

His assertion of the greater ‘eminency of the throne royal’ in England

than in Spain is mainly founded on the union in the English sovereignty

alone of supreme ecclesiastical with supreme civil power; and on the

lineal descent of the then sovereign ‘from Christian princes for 800

years,’ whereas the descent of the Kings of Spain ‘is chiefly from the

Earls of Castilia, about 500 years since,’ and the then King of Spain

was ‘yet in the infancy of his kingdom.’

Two minor and ancillary arguments in this tract are also notable: The

Spanish throne, says COTTON, hath not, as hath the English and French,

‘that virtue to endow the king therein invested with the power to heal

the king’s evil; for into France do yearly come multitudes of Spaniards

to be healed thereof.’ And he further alleges that ‘absolute power of

the King of England, which in other kingdoms is much restrained.’ The

time was to come when the close friend and fellow-combatant of ELIOT and

the other framers of the great ‘Petition of Right’ would rank himself

with the foremost in ‘much restraining’ the kingly power in England, and

would discover ample warrant in ancient precedents for every step of the

process. But, as yet, that time was afar off.

[Sidenote: MS. Cott. Vesp. C. xiii, ff. 158; 160, seqq. (B. M.)]

Immediately on the accession of King JAMES, Sir Robert COTTON greeted

the new monarch with two other and far more remarkable tractates on a

subject bearing closely on our relations with Spain. Their political

interest, as contributions to the history of public opinion, is great.

Their biographical interest is still greater. But I postpone the

consideration of them until we reach a momentous crisis in Sir Robert’s

life on which they have a vital bearing. He also wrote,—almost

simultaneously,—a much more courtierlike ‘_Discourse of his Majesty’s

descent from the Saxon Kings_,’ which was graciously welcomed.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Correspondence_, James I, vol. i, f. 3 (R. H.).] In

the following September he received the honour of knighthood. [Sidenote:

RETURNED TO PARLIAMENT.] In JAMES’ first Parliament he sat for the

County of Huntingdon, in fellowship with Sir Oliver CROMWELL, uncle of

the future Protector. There is no evidence that at this period he took

any active part in debate. Nor did he, at any time, win distinction as a

debater. But in the labours of Committees he was soon both zealous and

prominent. Two classes of questions, in particular, appear to have

engaged his attention:—questions of Church discipline, and questions of

administrative reform. [Sidenote: _Dom. Cor._ as above; vol. xix, pp. 37

seqq.; vol. xxvii, pp. 44 seqq. (R. H.); MS. Cott. Jul. C., iii, p. 10.

(B. M.)] He also assisted Bacon in the difficult attempt to frame

acceptable measures for a union with Scotland.

The fame of his library and of his museum of antiquities continued to

spread farther and wider. He had many agents on the Continent who sought

diligently to augment his collections. His correspondence with men who

were busied in like pursuits both at home and abroad increased. Much of

it has survived. On that interesting point at which a glance has been

cast already, its witness is uniform. He was always as ready to impart

as he was eager to collect. Few, if any, important works of historical

research were carried on in his day to which he did not, in some way or

other, give generous furtherance. At a time when he was most busy in

forming his own library, he helped BODLEY to lay the foundation of the

noble library at Oxford.

[Sidenote: FURTHER GROWTH AND SOURCES OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY.]

Readers who can call to mind even mere fragments of that superabundant

evidence which tells of the neglect throughout much of the Tudor period

of the public archives of the realm, can feel little surprise that Sir

Robert COTTON should have been able to collect a multitude of documents

which had once been the property of the nation, or of the sovereign.

Those who are most familiar with that evidence ought to be the first to

remember that, under the known circumstances of the time, the

presumption of honest acquisition is stronger than that of dishonest,

whenever conclusive proof of either is absent. English State Papers had

passed into the possession not only of English antiquarians, but of

English booksellers—and not a few of them into that of foreigners—before

COTTON was born. Other considerations bearing on this matter, and

tending as it seems in a like direction, belong to a later period of Sir

Robert’s life. There is, however, a very weighty one which stands at the

threshold of his career as a collector.

Almost the earliest incident which is recorded of COTTON’S youthful

days, is his concurrence in a petition in which Queen ELIZABETH was

entreated to establish a Public and National Library, and to honour it

with her own name. [Sidenote: ATTEMPT OF COTTON AND CAMDEN TO ESTABLISH

A NATIONAL LIBRARY.] Its especial and prime object was to be the

collection and preservation, as public property, of the monuments of our

English history. The proposal was not altogether new. It was a much

improved revival of a project which Dr. John DEE had once submitted, in

an immature form, to Queen MARY. It was the reiteration of an earnest

request which had been made to Queen ELIZABETH by Archbishop PARKER, at

a time when COTTON was still in his cradle. The joint petition of COTTON

and CAMDEN met with as little success as had attended the entreaties of

those who had taken the same path before them. [Sidenote: _Petition,

&c._ (undated) in Cotton MS. Faustina, E. V, ff. 67, 68.] The

petitioners were willing to bind themselves, and others like-minded, to

incur ‘costs, and charges,’ for the effectual attainment of their

patriotic object, on the condition of royal patronage and royal

fellow-working with them in its pursuit. When COTTON, upon bare

presumptions, is charged to be an embezzler of records, this Petition

comes to have a very obvious relevancy to the matter in question. The

relevancy is enhanced by the fact that two, at least, of those who had

(at various times) concurred in promoting its object, gave to the

Library of their fellow-labourer in the field of antiquity, manuscripts

and records which, had the issue of their project been otherwise, they

would have given to the ‘Public Library of Queen ELIZABETH,’ in express

trust for their fellow-countrymen at large.

Indirectly, this same petition has also its bearing on a curious passage

relating to Sir Robert COTTON which occurs among the Minute-books of the

Corporation of London, and which has recently been printed by Mr. RILEY,

in his preface to _Liber Custumarum_.

On the 10th of November, 1607, the Court of Aldermen of London recorded

the following minute: [Sidenote: COTTON AND THE CITY RECORDS OF LONDON.]

‘It is this day ordered, that Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Town Clerk, Mr.

EDMONDS, and Mr. Robert SMITH, or any three of them, shall repair to Sir

Robert COTTON, from this Court, and require him to deliver to the City’s

use three of the City’s books _which have been long time missing_—the

first book called _Liber Custumarum_; the second, called _Liber Legum

Antiquorum_; and the thirde, called _Fletewode_, which are affirmed to

be in his custody.’ Of the results of the interview of Master

Chamberlain and his fellow-ambassadors with COTTON no precise account

has been preserved. It is plain, however, from the sequel, that they

found the matter to be one for which such extremely curt ‘requisition’

was scarcely the appropriate mode of setting to work. The Corporation

appealed in vain to the Lord Privy Seal NORTHAMPTON; and they had

afterwards to solicit the mediation with COTTON of two of their own

members—Sir John JOLLES and another—who were personally known to him.

Their interposition was alike ineffectual. Of the interview we have no

report; but Sir Robert, it is clear, asserted his right to retain the

City books (or rather portions of books) which were then in his hands,

and he did retain them. They now form part of the well-known and very

valuable Cottonian MS., ‘Claudius D. XI.’

That these London records had once belonged to the citizens is now

unquestioned. That Cotton—both in 1607 and again in the following

year—asserted a title, of some sort, to those of them which were then in

his hands, seems also to be established. Is the fair inference this:

‘Their then holder, in 1607, had obtained them wrongfully, and he

persisted, despite all remonstrance, in his wrongful possession’? Is it

not rather to be inferred that, whosoever may have been the original

wrongdoer, Sir Robert COTTON had acquired them by a lawful purchase?

[Sidenote: THE DISPUTE ABOUT CITY RECORDS.] If that should have been the

fact, he may possibly have had a valid reason for declining to give what

he had, ineffectually and rudely, been commanded to restore.

On the other hand, it is impossible to defend Sir Robert’s occasional

mode of dealing with MSS.,—some of which, it is plain, were but lent to

him,—when, by misplacement of leaves, or by insertions, and sometimes by

both together, he confused their true sequence and aspect. Of this

unjustifiable manipulation I shall have to speak hereafter.

The years which followed close upon this little civic interlude were

amongst the busiest years of COTTON’S public life. He testified the

sincerity of his desire to serve his country faithfully, by the choice

of the subjects to the study of which he voluntarily bent his powers.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S MEMORIAL ON ABUSES IN THE NAVY.]

Abuses in the management of the navy and of naval establishments have

been at most periods of our history fruitful topics for reformers,

competent or other. In the early years of JAMES there was a special

tendency to the increase of such abuses in the growing unfitness for

exertion of the Lord High Admiral. NOTTINGHAM had yet many years to

live,—near as he had been to the threescore and ten when the new reign

began. But even his large appetencies were now almost sated with wealth,

employments, and honours; and ever since his return from his splendid

embassy to Spain, he seemed bent on compensating himself for his hard

labour under ELIZABETH by his indolent luxury under JAMES. The repose of

their chief had so favoured the illegitimate activities of his

subordinates, that when COTTON addressed himself to the task of

investigating the state of the naval administration he soon found that

it would be much easier to prove the existence and the gravity of the

abuses than to point to an effectual remedy.

The abuses were manifold. Some of them were, at that moment, scarcely

assailable. To COTTON, in particular, the approach to the subject was

beset with many difficulties. He was, however, much in earnest.

[Sidenote: THE INQUIRY INSTITUTED BY COTTON INTO ABUSES IN THE ROYAL

NAVY.] When he found that some of the obstacles must, for the present,

be rather turned by evasion than be encountered—with any fair chance of

success—by an open attack in front, he betook himself to the weaker side

of the enemy. He obtained careful information as to naval

account-keeping; discovered serious frauds; and opened the assault by a

conflict with officials not too powerful for immediate encounter,—though

far indeed from being unprotected.

[Sidenote: Cotton, _Memorial on Abuses of the Navy;—Domestic Corresp._

James I, vol. xli, p. 21. (R. H).]

Of Sir Robert’s _Memorial_ to the King, I can give but one brief

extract, by way of sample: ‘Upon a dangerous advantage,’ he writes,

‘which the Treasurer of the Navy taketh by the strict letter of his

Patent, to be discharged of all his accounts by the only vouchee and

allowance of _two_ chief officers, it falls out, strangely, at this

time—by the weakness of the Controller and cunning of the Surveyor—that

these two offices are, in effect, but _one_, which is the Surveyor

himself, who—joining with the Treasurer as a Purveyor of all

provisions—becomes a paymaster to himself ... at such rates as _he_

thinks good.’ It is a suggestive statement.

COTTON’S most intimate political friendships were at this time with the

HOWARDS. Henry HOWARD (now Earl of Northampton),—whatever the intrinsic

baseness and perfidy of his nature, was a man of large capacity. He was

not unfriendly to reform,—when abuses put no pelf in his own pocket. To

naval reforms, his nearness of blood to NOTTINGHAM, the Lord High

Admiral, tended rather to predispose him; for when near relatives

dislike one another, the intensity of their dislike is sometimes

wonderful to all bystanders. Interest made these two sometimes allies,

but it never made them friends. NORTHAMPTON gave his whole influence in

favour of Sir Robert’s plan. He began the inquiries into this wide

subject by persuading the King to appoint a Commission. On the 30th of

April, 1608, Letters Patent were issued, in the preamble of which the

pith of the Memorial is thus recited: ‘We are informed that very great

and considerable abuses, deceits, frauds, corruptions, negligences,

misdemeanours and offences have been and daily are perpetrated ...

_against the continual admonitions and directions of you, our Lord High

Admiral_, by other the officers of and concerning our Navy Royal, and by

the Clerks of the Prick and Check, and divers other inferior officers,

ministers, mariners, soldiers, and others working or labouring in or

about our said Navy;’ [Sidenote: COMMISSION FOR INQUIRY ON THE ABUSES IN

THE NAVY.] and thereupon full powers are given to the Commissioners so

appointed to make full inquiry into the allegations; and to certify

their proceedings and opinions. COTTON was made a member of the

Commission, and at the head of it were placed the Earls of NORTHAMPTON

and of NOTTINGHAM. It was directed that the inquiry should be carried at

least as far back as the year 1598. The Admiral’s share was little more

than nominal. The proceedings were opened on the 7th of May, 1608, when,

as

COTTON himself reports, an ‘elegant speech was made by Lord Northampton,

of His Majesty’s provident and princely purposes for reformation of the

abuses.’ Northampton, he adds, ‘took especial pains and care for a full

and faithful discharge of that trust.’ At his instance Sir Robert was

made Chairman of a sort of sub-committee, to which the preliminary

inquiries and general array of the business were entrusted; [Sidenote:

_Proceedings in the Commission for the Navy Royal_; MS. COTT. Julius F.

iii, fol. 1. (B. M.)] ‘Sir Robert COTTON, during all the time of this

service, entertaining his assistants at his house at the Blackfriars as

often as occasion served.’

The inquiry lasted from May, 1608, to June, 1609. COTTON was then

requested by his fellow-commissioners to make an abstract of the

depositions to be reported to the King. It abundantly justified the

Memorial of 1608. JAMES, when he had read it, ordered a final meeting of

the Commissioners to be held in his presence, at which all the

inculpated officers were to attend that they might adduce whatever

answers or pleas of defence might be in their power. ‘In the end,’ says

Sir Robert, ‘they were advised rather to cast themselves at the feet of

his grace and goodness for pardon, than to rely upon their weak replies;

which they readily did.’ The most important outcome of the inquiry was

the preparation of a ‘_Book of Ordinances for the Navy Royal_,’ in the

framing of which Sir Robert COTTON had the largest share. It led to many

improvements. But, in subsequent years, measures of a still more

stringent character were found needful.

[Sidenote: THE INQUIRY INTO CROWN REVENUES.]

In the next year after the presentation of this Report on the Navy, Sir

Robert addressed to the King another Report on the Revenues of the

Crown. The question is treated historically rather than politically, but

the long induction of fiscal records is frequently enlivened by keen

glances both at underlying principles and at practical results. Once or

twice, at least, these side glances are such as, when we now regard

them, in the light of the subsequent history of JAMES’S own reign and of

that of his next successor, seem to have in them more of irony than of

earnest. The style of the treatise is clear, terse, and pointed.

On no branch of the subject does the author go into more minute detail

than on that delicate one of the historical precedents for ‘abating and

reforming excesses of the Royal Household, Retinue, and Favourites.’ He

points the moral by express reference to existing circumstances. Thus,

for example, in treating of the arrangements of the royal household, he

says, ‘There is never a back-door at Court that costs not the king £2000

yearly;’ and again, when treating of gifts to royal favourites: ‘It is

one of the greatest accusations against the Duke of Somerset for

suffering the King [EDWARD VI] to give away the possessions and profits

of the Crown in manner of a spoil.’

Not less plainspoken are COTTON’S words about a question that was

destined, in a short time, to excite the whole kingdom. Tonnage and

poundage, he says, were granted simply for defence of the State, ‘so

they may be employed in the wars; and particular Treasurers account in

Parliament’ for that employment. [Sidenote: _Proceedings in the

Commission for the Navy Royal, &c._; as above.] ‘They are so granted,’

he adds, ‘in express words; and that they proceed of goodwill, not of

duty. Precedents of this nature are plentiful in all the Rolls.’ A final

example of this sort may be found in the pithy warning grounded upon

RICHARD THE SECOND’S grant to a minion of the power of compounding with

delinquents. It was fatal, he says, both to the king and to his

instrument. ‘It grew the death of the one and the deposition of the

other.’

COTTON’S Report on the Crown Revenues has also an incidental interest.

Out of it grew the creation of the new dignity of baronets. Were His

Majesty, says the writer, ‘now to make a degree of honour hereditary as

Baronets, next under Barons, and grant them in tail, taking of every one

£1000, in fine it would raise with ease £100,000; [Sidenote: COTTON’S

PROPOSITION FOR THE CREATION OF BARONETS, 1609.] and, _by a judicious

election_, be a means to content those worthy persons in the

Commonwealth that by the confused admission of [so] many Knights of the

Bath held themselves all this time disgraced.’ When this passage was

written that which had been, under ELIZABETH, so real and eminent an

honour as to be eagerly coveted by patriotic men, had been lavished by

JAMES with a profusion which entailed their contempt and disgust. I have

before me the fine old MS. from a passage in which COTTON borrowed the

title of the new dignity. [Sidenote: 9 R. II. Durh. 17 July, 1385.

COTTON MS., Nero D., vi, § 16. (B. M.)] The word occurs thus:—‘_Ceux

sont les estatutz, ordenances ... de n̄re très excellent souv seigneur

le Roy Richard, et Johan, Duc de Lancastre, ... et des autres Contes,

Barons, et_ Baronnetz, _et sages Chivalers_.’

Sir Robert was himself amongst the earliest receivers (June, 1611) of

the new order. Its creation led to many jealousies and discords. It gave

both to the King and to his councillors not a little trouble in settling

the precise privileges and precedencies of its holders. In those

controversies the author of the suggestion took no very active part.

King JAMES was much more anxious for the speedy receipt of the hundred

thousand pounds, than about the ‘judicious election’ of those by whom

the money was to be provided. COTTON’S satisfaction with the ultimate

working out of his plan must have had its large alloy.[5]

This is the more apparent, inasmuch as, at the first acceptance of his

project, Sir Robert had obtained the King’s distinct promise that no

future creation of a baron should be made, until the new peer had first

received the degree of baronet; unless he belonged to a family already

ennobled. Hearing of a probability that the royal promise in this

respect was likely to be broken, he wrote to Somerset:—‘If His Highness

_will_ do it, I rather humbly beg a relinquishing in the design of the

baronets, as desponding of good success.’ [Sidenote: Cotton to Somerset

(undated) MS. Harl., 7002, f. 380. (B. M.)] But to James all projects

for the opening of gold mines—whether at home or abroad—were much too

attractive to be staved off by any puritanic scruples about pledge or

promise. For him, from youth to dotage, the one thing needful was gold.

The question of the baronetcies is one of the earliest which brings us

in presence of the eventful political connection which subsisted between

COTTON and the Earl of SOMERSET. [Sidenote: THE POLITICAL INTERCOURSE OF

SIR R. COTTON WITH LORD SOMERSET. 1613–1615.] Of its first beginnings no

precise testimony seems to have survived. But there is a strong

presumption that when SOMERSET was led, by his fatal love for Lady

ESSEX, to change his early position of antagonism to the HOWARDS for one

of alliance and friendship, he came frequently into contact with Sir

Robert, who had long been familiarly acquainted with the Earl of

SUFFOLK—and also with his too well-known Countess—as well as with the

Earl of NORTHAMPTON.

The one ineffaceable stigma on SOMERSET’S memory which was brought upon

him by his disgraceful marriage has barred the way to an impartial

estimate of his standing as a politician. A man who was branded by his

peers (though upon garbled depositions) as a murderer can scarcely, by

possibility, have his pretensions to statesmanship fairly weighed in a

just balance. Such testimony, it is true, as that on which SOMERSET was

found guilty of the poisoning of OVERBURY would not now suffice to

convict a vagrant of petty larceny. It would not indeed at this day be

treated as evidence at all; it would be looked upon as a mere decoction

of surmises. But the foul scandal of the marriage itself has so tainted

SOMERSET’S very name that historians (almost with one consent) have

condoned the baseness of his prosecutors.

With some of this man’s contemporaries it was quite otherwise. Some

English statesmen whose names we have all learnt to venerate, looked

upon the murder of OVERBURY as a revengeful deed instigated by Lady

SOMERSET, wholly without her husband’s complicity; and they looked at

SOMERSET’S conviction of complicity in the crime as simply the issue of

a skilfully-managed court intrigue, for a court object. They knew that

SOMERSET’S enemies had been wont to say amongst themselves, ‘A nail is

best driven out by driving in another nail,’ and had, very effectually,

put the proverb into action. They knew, too, that to the rising

favourite the King had committed—most characteristically—the pleasing

task of communicating, on his behalf, with the Crown lawyers, as their

own task of compiling the depositions against the falling favourite went

on from stage to stage.

Sir Robert COTTON believed not only that SOMERSET was guiltless of the

murder of OVERBURY, and that the Earl’s political extinction was

resolved upon, as the readiest means of making room for a new favourite,

but he also believed that SOMERSET’S loss of power involved the loss by

England—for a long time to come—of some useful domestic reforms, as well

as its subjection to several new abuses. This belief was a favourite

subject of conversation with him to his dying day. He was in the habit

of imparting it to the famous men who, in the early years of the next

reign, joined with him in fighting the battles of parliamentary freedom

against royal prerogative. There may well have been an element of truth

in COTTON’S view of the matter, though, in these days, it seems but a

barren pursuit to have discussed the preferability to England of the

rule of a Robert CARR rather than that of a George VILLIERS.

[Sidenote: COTTON AND THE PROJECTED SPANISH MATCH.]

What is now chiefly important in the close political connection which

was formed between COTTON and SOMERSET is the fact that it eventually

thrust Sir Robert’s fortune and entire future into great peril, even if

it did not actually hazard his life itself, as well as his fair fame

with posterity. The life that was preserved to him was also to be

redeemed by future and brilliant public service. [Sidenote: 1615.] His

fortune sustained no great damage, and much of it was afterwards spent

upon public objects. His reputation as a statesman, however, suffered,

and must suffer, some degree of loss. SOMERSET led him to become an

agent in urging on the treaty for the marriage of Prince CHARLES with

the Infanta of Spain. As it seems, his agency was—for a very brief

period—even active and zealous. Neither SOMERSET nor COTTON, however,

set that intercourse with GONDOMAR afoot which presently brought Sir

Robert within the toils. It was pleasantly originated by the wily

Spaniard himself, in the character of _a lover of antiquities_, deeply

anxious to study Sir Robert’s Museum, in its owner’s company.

It is unfortunate for a truthful estimate of the _degree_ of discredit

attachable to Cotton for this agency in promoting a scheme pregnant with

dishonour to England, that little evidence of the share he took in it is

now to be derived from any English source. His own extant correspondence

yields very little, though it suffices to establish the fact of the

agency, apart from that testimony of GONDOMAR, which will be cited

presently.

Under COTTON’S own hand we have the fact that in a conversation with

himself the Ambassador of Spain on one occasion held out (by way, it

seems, more immediately, of inducement to the English Government to

shape certain pending negotiations on other matters into greater

conformity with _Spanish_ counsels) [Sidenote: Cotton to Somerset;

(undated) Harleian MS. 7002, fol. 378. (B. M.)] the threat that, if such

a course were not taken, ‘turbulent spirits—of which Spain wanteth

not—might add some hurt to the ill affairs of Ireland, or hindrance to

the near affecting of the great work now in hand;’ a threat which COTTON

transmits to SOMERSET without rebuke or comment.

Early in 1615, COTTON had an interview with GONDOMAR in relation to the

progress of the marriage negotiation in Spain. Of what passed at this

interview we have no _detailed_ account other than that which was sent

to the King of Spain by his Ambassador. The way in which COTTON’S name

is introduced, and the singular misstatement that he had the custody of

‘all the King’s archives,’ seem to imply that GONDOMAR had still but

little knowledge of the messenger now employed by JAMES and by SOMERSET

to confer with him. Throughout, the reader will have to bear in mind

that the narrative is GONDOMAR’S, and that all the material points of it

rest upon his sole authority.

[Sidenote: 1615. April 18.]

‘The King and the Earl of SOMERSET,’ writes the Ambassador, ‘have sent

in great secrecy by Sir Robert COTTON—who is a gentleman greatly

esteemed here, and with whom the King has deposited all his archives—to

tell me what Sir John DIGBY has written about the marriage of the

Infanta with this Prince. COTTON informed me that he was greatly pleased

that the negotiation had been so well received in Spain, because he

desired its conclusion and success. He enlarged upon the conveniencies

of the marriage, but said that the King considered DIGBY not to be a

good negotiator, because he was a great friend of the Archbishop of

Canterbury, and of the Earl of PEMBROKE, who were of the Puritan

faction, and was in correspondence with them.’... ‘In order to make a

beginning,’ continued COTTON, as GONDOMAR reports his conversation, ‘the

King must beg your Majesty to answer three questions: (1.) “Does your

Majesty believe that with a safe conscience you can negotiate this

marriage?” (2.) “Is your Majesty sincerely desirous to conclude it, upon

conditions suitable to both parties?” (3.) “Will your Majesty abstain

from asking anything, in matters of Religion, which would compel him to

do that which he cannot do without risking his life and his kingdom;

contenting yourself with trusting that he will be able to settle matters

quietly?” [Sidenote: Gardiner Transcripts of Simancas MSS.] When an

answer is given to these questions he will consider the matter as

settled, and will immediately give a commission to the Earl of Somerset

to arrange the points with me. [Sidenote: See also S. R. Gardiner, in

_Letters of Gondomar, giving an Account of the affair of the Earl of

Somerset_; (_Archæologia_, vol. xli.)] This Sir Robert COTTON is held

here, by many, to be a Puritan, but he told me that he was a Catholic,

and gave me many reasons why no man of sense could be anything else.’ He

afterwards adds: ‘Sir Robert COTTON, who has treated with me in this

business, tells me that after the marriage is agreed upon, [and] before

the Infanta arrives in England, matters of Religion will be in a much

improved condition.’ The writer of this remarkable despatch, it may be

well to mention, had asserted with equal roundness, but a few months

before, that JAMES himself had said, at the dinner-table: ‘I have no

doubt that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church.’

[Sidenote: Simancas MSS. 2590, 10 (Gardiner Transcripts).]

Nor is it unimportant, as bearing on the _degree_ of credibility to be

assigned to GONDOMAR’S despatches, when they chance to be

uncorroborated,—to remark that a despatch addressed by him to the Duke

of LERMA, in November, contains an express contradiction of an assertion

addressed to PHILIP, in the preceding April. To the King, as we have

just seen, he narrates COTTON’S communication of despatches written by

DIGBY. To the Minister he writes, six months later, that ‘a traitor had

given information’ against COTTON, for communicating Papers of State to

the Spanish Ambassador, and that the charge is ‘false.’ [Sidenote:

Simancas MS. 2534, 61 (Gardiner Transcripts).] Discrepancies like this

(howsoever easily explained, or explainable) suffice to show that

GONDOMAR’S testimony, when unsupported, needs to be read with caution;

and of such discrepancies there are many. Consummate as he was in

diplomatic ability of several kinds, this able statesman was

nevertheless loose (and sometimes reckless) in assertion. He was very

credulous when he listened to welcome news. It is impossible to study

his correspondence without perceiving that to him, as to so many other

men, the wish was often father of the thought.

On the 22nd of June, Sir Robert paid another visit to GONDOMAR. He told

me, says the Ambassador, that the King’s hesitations had been overcome;

that JAMES was now willing to negotiate on the basis of the Spanish

articles, with some slight modifications; that Somerset had taken his

stand upon the match with Spain, had won the co-operation of the Duke of

Lennox, and was now willing to stake his fortunes on the issue. Sir

Robert COTTON, adds GONDOMAR, ‘assured me of his own satisfaction at the

turn which things had taken, as he had no more ardent wish than to live

and die an avowed Catholic, like his fathers and ancestors.[6] Whereupon

I embraced him, and said that God would guide.’

Thus far, I have, advisedly, followed a Spanish account of English

conversations. Although believing that there exists, already ample,

evidence (both in our own archives and elsewhere) for bringing home to

the Count of GONDOMAR wilful misstatements of [Sidenote: SIR ROBERT

COTTON’S ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH COUNT GONDOMAR.] fact—in

the despatches which he was wont to write from London—as well as very

pardonable misapprehensions of the talk which he reports, I have

preferred to put before the reader the Ambassador’s own story in its

Spanish integrity.

The mere fact, indeed, that an English historian[7], deservedly esteemed

for his acute and painstaking research, as well as for his eminent

abilities, has honoured GONDOMAR’S story by endorsing it, is warrant

enough for citing these despatches as they stand. But they have now to

be compared with another account of the same transaction given by

authority of Sir Robert COTTON himself. It was given upon a memorable

occasion. The place was the Painted Chamber in the Palace of

Westminster. The hearers were the assembled Lords and Commons of the

Realm.[8]

The Spaniard, it seems, was far, indeed, from holding—as he says that he

held—his first conference with COTTON either in his own ambassadorial

lodging, or upon credentials given in the name and by the command of

King JAMES. That COTTON sought him he suggests, by implication. That the

visit, in which the ground was broken, was made at the King’s instance,

he states circumstantially. Both the suggestion and the assertion are

false.

As the reader has seen, Sir Robert’s openness in exhibiting his library

and his antiquities was matter of public notoriety. [Sidenote: 1614.

February.] Profiting by that well-known facility of access, the Spanish

Ambassador presented himself at Cotton House in the guise of a virtuoso.

‘Do me the favour—with your wonted benevolence to strangers—to let me

see your Museum.’ With some such words as these, GONDOMAR volunteered

his first visit; led the conversation, by and bye, to politics; found

that COTTON was not amongst the fanatical and undiscriminating enemies

of Spain at all price—outspoken, as he had been, from the first, in his

assertion both of the wisdom and of the duty of England to protect the

Netherlanders; showed him certain letters or papers (not now to be

identified, it appears), and in that way produced an impression on

COTTON’S mind which led him to confer with SOMERSET, and eventually with

the King. So much is certain. Unfortunately, the speeches at the famous

‘Conference’ on the Spanish Treaty, in 1624, are reported in the most

fragmentary way imaginable. The reporter gives mere hints, where the

reader anxiously looks for details. Their present value lies in the

conclusive reasons which notwithstanding the lacunæ—they supply for

weighing, with many grains of caution, the accusations of an enemy of

England against an English statesman—whensoever it chances that those

accusations are uncorroborated. King JAMES himself (it may here be

added), when looking back at this mysterious transaction some years

later, and in one of his Anti-Spanish moods—said to Sir Robert: ‘The

Spaniard is a juggling jack. I believe he forged those letters;’

alluding, as the context suggests, to the papers—whatever they

were—which GONDOMAR showed to COTTON at the outset of their intercourse,

in order to induce him to act as an intermediary between himself and the

Earl of SOMERSET.

At this time, the ground was already trembling beneath SOMERSET’S feet,

though he little suspected the source of his real danger. He knew, ere

long, that an attempt would be made to charge him with embezzling jewels

of the Crown. In connection with this charge there was a State secret,

in which Sir Robert COTTON was a participant with SOMERSET, and with the

King himself. And a secret it has remained. Such jewels, it is plain,

were in SOMERSET’S hands, and by him were transferred to those of

COTTON. Few persons who have had occasion to look closely into the

surviving documents and correspondence which bear upon the subsequent

and famous trials for the murder of OVERBURY, will be likely to doubt

that the secret was one among those ‘alien matters’ of which SOMERSET

was so urgently and so repeatedly adjured and warned, by JAMES’S

emissaries, to avoid all mention, should he still persist (despite the

royal, repeated, and almost passionate, entreaties with which he was

beset) in putting himself upon his trial; instead of pleading guilty,

after his wife’s example, and trusting implicitly to the royal mercy.

For the purpose of warding off the lesser, but foreseen, danger, COTTON

advised the Earl to take a step of which the Crown lawyers made

subsequent and very effective use, in order to preclude all chance of

his escape from the unforeseen and greater danger. [Sidenote: 1615.

July.] By Sir Robert’s recommendation he obtained from the King

permission to have a pardon drawn, in which, amongst other provisions,

it was granted that no account whatever should be exacted from SOMERSET

at the royal exchequer; and to that pardon the King directed the

Chancellor to affix the Great Seal. The Seal, however, was withheld, and

a remarkable scene ensued in the Council Chamber. There are extant two

or three narratives of the occurrence, which agree pretty well in

substance. Of these GONDOMAR’S is the most graphic. The incident took

place on the 20th of August. The despatch in which it is minutely

described was written on the 20th of October. There is reason to believe

that the Ambassador drew his information from an eye-witness of what

passed.

‘As the King was about to leave the Council Board,’ writes GONDOMAR,

‘SOMERSET made to him a speech which, as I was told, had been

preconcerted between them. [Sidenote: THE SCENE IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER,

RESPECTING THE PARDON DRAWN BY SIR R. COTTON FOR SOMERSET.] He said that

the malice of his enemies had forced him to ask for a pardon; adduced

arguments of his innocency; and then besought the King to command the

Chancellor to declare at once what he had to allege against him, or else

to put the seal to the pardon. [Sidenote: 1615. August.] The King,

without permitting anything to be spoken, said a great deal in

SOMERSET’S praise; asserted that the Earl had acted rightly in asking

for a pardon, which it was a pleasure to himself to grant—although the

Earl would certainly stand in no need of it in his days—on the Prince’s

account, who was then present.’ Here, writes GONDOMAR, the King placed

his hand on the Prince’s shoulder, and added—‘That he may not undo what

I have done.’ Then, turning to the Chancellor, the King ended with the

words: ‘And so, my Lord Chancellor, put the seal to it; for such is my

will.’ The Chancellor, instead of obeying, threw himself on his knees,

told the King that the pardon was so widely drawn that it made SOMERSET

(as Lord Chamberlain) absolute master of ‘jewels, hangings, tapestry,

and of all that the palace contained; seeing that no account was to be

demanded of him for anything.’ And then the Chancellor added: ‘If your

Majesty insists upon it, I entreat you to grant me a pardon also for

passing it; otherwise I cannot do it.’ On this the King grew angry, and

with the words, ‘I order you to pass it, and you must pass it,’ left the

Council Chamber. His departure in a rage, before the pardon was sealed,

gave SOMERSET’S enemies another opportunity by which they did not fail

to profit. They had the Queen on their side. On that very day, too, the

King set out on a progress, long before arranged. For the time the

matter dropped. Before the Ambassador of Spain took up his pen to tell

the story to his Court, VILLIERS, ‘the new favourite,’ had begun to

supplant his rival; so that the same despatch which narrates the

beginnings of the fall of SOMERSET, tells also of the first stage in the

rapid rise of BUCKINGHAM.

[Sidenote: THE SECOND PARDON DRAWN BY COTTON. 1615, Sept.]

About a month after this wrangling at the Council Board, SOMERSET again

advised with Sir Robert COTTON on the same subject. [Sidenote: _Report

of the Trial of the Earl of Somerset._ (MS. R. H.)] COTTON recommended

him to have the Pardon renewed; saying to the Earl, ‘In respect you have

received some disgrace in the opinion of the world, in having passed’

[_i. e._ missed] ‘that pardon which in the summer you desired, and

seeing there be many precedents of larger pardons, I would have you get

one after the largest precedent; that so, by that addition, you may

recover your honour.’ Strangely as these closing words now sound, in

relation to such a matter, they seem to embody both the feeling and the

practice of the times.

In another version of the proceedings at the trial of May, 1616,

SOMERSET is represented as using in the course of his defence these

words: ‘To Sir Robert COTTON I referred the whole drawing and despatch

of the Pardon.’ And again: ‘I first sought the Pardon by the motion and

persuasion of Sir Robert COTTON, who told me in what dangers great

persons honoured with so many royal favours had stood, in former times.’

[Sidenote: MS. Report of Trial (R. H.)] Sir Robert’s own account of this

and of many correlative matters of a still graver sort has come down to

us only in garbled fragments and extracts from his examinations, such as

it suited the purposes of the law-officers of the Crown to make use of,

after their fashion. The original documents were as carefully

suppressed, as COTTON’S appearance in person at the subsequent trial was

effectually hindered. At that day it was held to be an unanswerable

reason for the non-appearance of a witness,—whatever the weight of his

testimony,—to allege that he was regarded by the Crown as ‘a

delinquent,’ and could not, therefore, be publicly questioned upon

‘matters of State.’ There is little cause to marvel that a scrutinising

reader of the _State Trials_ (in their published form) is continually in

doubt whether what he reads ought to be regarded as sober history, or as

wild and, it may be, venomous romance.

One other incident of 1615 needs to be noticed before we proceed to the

catastrophe of the Gondomar story.

[Sidenote: 1615. May 24.]

In May of this year Sir Robert wrote a letter to Prince CHARLES, which

is notable for the contrasted advice, in respect to warlike pursuits,

which it proffers to the new Prince, from that more famous advice which

had but recently been offered to his late brother. [Sidenote: Comp. MS.

Cott. Cleop. F. vi, § 1. ‘_An Answer ... to certain military men, &c._,

(April, 1609).] He had lately found, he tells Prince CHARLES, a very

ancient volume containing the principal passages of affairs between the

two kingdoms of England and France under the reigns of King HENRY THE

THIRD and King HENRY THE FIFTH, and had caused a friend of his to

abstract from it the main grounds of the claim of the Kings of England

to the Crown of France; translating the original Latin into English.

This he now dedicates to the Prince, ‘as a piece of evidence concerning

that title which, at the time when God hath appointed, shall come unto

you.’ He ends his letter in a strain more than usually rhetorical:—‘This

title hath heretofore been pleaded in France, as well by ordinary

arguments of civil and common law, as also by more sharp syllogisms of

cannons in the field. There have your noble ancestors, Kings of this

realm, often argued in arms; there have been their large chases; there,

their pleasant walks; there have they hewed honour out of the sides of

their enemies; there—in default of peaceable justice—they have carried

the cause by sentence of the sword. [Sidenote: Sir R. Cotton to Prince

Charles. (MS. Lansd. 223. fol. 7.) (Copy.) (B. M.)] God grant that your

Highness may, both in virtues and victories, not only imitate, but far

excel them.’

[Sidenote: The King to Archbishop of Canterbury, &c. _Domestic Corresp._

James I, vol. lxxxvi, § 16. (R. H.)]

The royal commission for the first examination of COTTON was issued on

the 26th of October, 1615. Two months afterwards he was committed to the

custody of one of the Aldermen of London. His library and papers were

also searched.

COTTON’S accusation was that of having communicated papers and secrets

of State to the Spanish Ambassador. He was subjected to repeated

examinations, which (as we have seen) are extant only in part. He

maintained his innocence of all intentional offence. [Sidenote: COTTON’S

EXAMINATIONS BY COMMISSION Jan.-April, 1616.] ‘The King,’ he said, ‘gave

me instruction to speak as I did. If I misunderstood His Majesty my

fault was involuntary. I followed the King’s instruction to the best of

my belief and recollection.’ The examiners, however, were more intent by

far on extracting something from COTTON that would tell against

SOMERSET, than on the punishment of the fallen favourite’s ally and

agent. COKE, in particular, was indefatigable in the task. It was as

congenial to him as was the study of BRACTON or of LITTLETON.

What then must have been his delight when,—whilst attending a sermon at

Paul’s Cross,—word was brought to him which gave hope of a discovery of

SOMERSET’S most secret correspondence? The pending proceedings had

stirred men’s minds in city and suburb, as well as at Court. A London

merchant had been asked, a little while before, to take into his charge

a box of papers. The depositor was a woman of the middle class, with

whom his acquaintance was but slight. At that time there was nothing in

the incident to excite suspicion. But, at a moment when strange rumours

were afloat, the depositor suddenly requested the return of the deposit.

The merchant bethought himself that the circumstances now looked

mysterious. If the papers should chance to bear on matters of State, to

have had any concern with them, howsoever innocent, might be dangerous.

He carried the box to Sir Edward COKE’S chambers. Not a moment was lost

in apprising the absent lawyer of the incident. Such news was of more

interest than the sermon. Probably, the preacher had not finished his

exordium, before all the faculties of COKE and of a fellow-commissioner

were bent on the letters which had passed between SOMERSET and

NORTHAMPTON.

If GONDOMAR is to be believed, some secret papers belonging to King

JAMES himself were part of the precious spoil.[9]

As usual, there are two accounts of the original secretor of the papers

so opportunely discovered. According to one of them, the box was

delivered by SOMERSET’S own order to the woman by whom it was carried to

the London merchant. [Sidenote: COTTON’S DEALINGS WITH SOMERSET’S

CORRESPONDENCE.] [Sidenote: 1615.] According to another, SOMERSET

entrusted the papers to COTTON; and the latter, anticipating the search

and sealing up of his library, gave them to a female acquaintance with

whom he thought they would remain in safety, but whose own fears led her

to shift their custody, in her turn.

That the letters which NORTHAMPTON had received from

SOMERSET—containing, amongst many other things, numerous references to

the imprisonment of OVERBURY in the Tower—had been in Sir Robert

COTTON’S hands is unquestioned. After NORTHAMPTON’S death, COTTON, to

use his own words, had been ‘permitted to peruse and oversee all the

writings, books, &c. in the Earl’s study.’ In the course of this

examination he proceeds to say, ‘I had collected thirty several letters

of my Lord of SOMERSET to the Earl of Northampton, which, upon request,

I delivered to my Lord Treasurer [the Earl of SUFFOLK,] who sent them to

the Earl of SOMERSET.’ SUFFOLK, it is to be remembered, was

NORTHAMPTON’S heir.

Thus far, no charge rests upon COTTON in relation to this

correspondence. What he did in disposing of SOMERSET’S letters was done

by order of the representatives of their deceased owner. It is far

otherwise with respect to their treatment after they had repassed, by

SUFFOLK’S gift, into the hands of SOMERSET, their writer.

The letters were undated. That they should be so was in accordance with

the practice of a majority of the letter-writers of the time—as students

of history know to their sorrow. [Sidenote: Extracts of Examinations,

&c. (R. H.).] When suspicion was aroused and inquiry commenced about the

real cause of OVERBURY’S death, COTTON’S advice was sought by SOMERSET.

He told me, says SOMERSET himself: ‘These letters of yours may be dated,

so as may clear you of all imputation.’ Did he mean that the dates might

be forged, and so be made to bear false witness? Or did he mean that, by

putting their true dates to the letters, their contents would exculpate

an innocent man? To these questions there is absolutely no answer, save

the presumptive answer of character.[10]

Whatever may be our estimate of the difficulty attending on the

admission of such exculpation as that, in respect of a charge which

amounts (in substance) to participation, after the fact, in the crime of

murder, there is really now no alternative. That Sir Robert COTTON put

dates to SOMERSET’S undated letters is certain. It was found to be

absolutely impossible, after desperate effort, to prove that the dates

were false. It is alike impossible to prove that they are true. These

dates are in COTTON’S own hand, without any attempt to disguise it.

Upon the hypothesis of SOMERSET’S guilt, the question is beset with as

much difficulty, as upon the hypothesis of his innocence. By procuring

OVERBURY’S imprisonment—with whatever motive, or beneath whatever

influence—SOMERSET had brought himself under inevitable suspicion of

complicity in the ultimate result of that imprisonment. He was already

within the web. His struggles made it only the more tangled.

Sir Robert COTTON remained in custody until the middle of the year 1616.

He was effectually prevented from appearing in May of that year as a

witness at his friend’s trial. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._ James I,

vol. lxxxvii, f. 67 (R. H.).] He was himself put to no form of trial

whatever. But he had to purchase his pardon at the price of five hundred

pounds. It received the Great Seal on the 16th July. [Sidenote: Bacon to

Villiers, Feb. 1; and April 18; 1616.] Remembering BACON’S share in each

stage of the proceedings against SOMERSET, and the lavishness of his

professions to VILLIERS of the extreme delight he felt in following the

lead of the new favourite throughout every step of the prosecution of

the old one, it is suggestive to note that the framers, five years

afterwards, of a pardon for the Lord Chancellor BACON were directed to

follow the precedent of the pardon granted in July 1616 to Sir Robert

COTTON.

Nor is it of less interest to observe that, to some of Sir Robert

COTTON’S closest friends, it seemed—at the moment when every part of the

matter was fresh in men’s minds—that it was much more needful for him to

exonerate himself from a suspicion of having stood beside SOMERSET too

lukewarmly, than to clear himself from the charge of committing a

forgery in order to cloke a murder. Very significant, for example, are

the words of one of those friends which I find in a letter addressed to

COTTON on the very day on which his pardon passed the Great Seal:—‘If I

say I rejoice and gratulate to you your return to your own house, as I

did lament your captivity, ... it will easily be credited.... The

unsureness of this collusive world, and the danger of great friendships,

you have already felt; and may truly say, with holy DAVID, _Nolite

fidere in principibus_.... As I hear, you have begun to make good use of

it, by receiving to you your Lady which God himself had knit unto you.

It is a piety for which you are commended. And, were it not for one

thing I should think my comfort in you were complete.... _It is said you

were not sufficiently sincere to your most trusting friend, the pitied

Earl. [Sidenote: E. Bolton to Sir R. Cotton; Cott. MS. Julius C., iii,

fol. 32. (B. M.)] Though I hold this a slander, yet being not able to

make particular defences, I opposed my general protestation against it

as an injury to my friend._ Yet wanting apt countermines to meet with

those close works by which some seek to blow up a breach into your

honour, I was not a little afflicted.... I leave the arming of me in

this cause to your own pleasure.’

The caution as to the danger of the friendships of grandees and great

favourites was one which COTTON took to heart. In the years to come he

had occasionally to give critical advice, in critical junctures. But, in

the true sense of the words, he learnt, at last, not to put his trust in

Princes. Long before his acquaintance with SOMERSET and his private

conferences with JAMES, a very true and dear friend had noted a

dangerous proclivity in Sir Robert’s character. [Sidenote: Arthur Agarde

to Sir R. Cotton: Cott. MS. Julius C., iii, fol. 1.] It prompted, by way

of counsel, the words: ‘Be yourself; and no man’s creature; but [only]

God’s. And so He will prosper all your designs, both to his glory and

your good.’

That ply had been taken too deeply, however, to be very easily smoothed

out. In the years to come Sir Robert COTTON approached—more than once,

perhaps—the brink of the old peril. As BUCKINGHAM clomb higher and

higher, and busied himself with many transactions of the nature of which

he had but a very insecure mental grasp, he felt his need of the

counsels of experienced men. He made occasional advances to COTTON,

amongst others. They were met; and not always so warily, as might now

have been expected.

But against the danger which over-confiding intercourse with

too-powerful courtiers was sure to bring in its train, COTTON found a

better safeguard in wounded self-esteem, than even in dearbought

experience. He soon saw that in BUCKINGHAM’S character there was at

least as much of vacillation as of versatility. The famous lines which

describe the son as

A man so various, that he seem’d to be

Not one, but all mankind’s epitome,

would have a spice of truth if applied to the father. But their

applicability is only partial; whereas the lines which follow are almost

as true—a single word excepted—of the first Duke of Buckingham as they

were of the second—

Stiff in opinions; often in the wrong;

He’s everything by starts, and nothing long.

When Sir Robert COTTON perceived that James’s new favourite would

listen, in the morning, to grave advice on a grave subject, and affirm

his resolution to act upon it; and yet, in the afternoon suffer himself

to be carried from his purpose by the silly jests or malicious

suggestions of youngsters and sycophants, unacquainted with affairs and

often reckless of consequences, he saw the wisdom of standing somewhat

aloof. He rarely, however, refused his advice, when it was asked. In

regard to matters of naval administration,—the authoritative value of

his opinion on which was now everywhere recognised, save in the

dockyards and their dependencies,—he gave it with especial willingness.

But henceforward, to use AGARDE’S words, he was ‘no man’s creature.’

Five years passed on, marked by events which stirred England to its

core, but to Sir Robert COTTON they were years of comparative quiet. He

was, indeed, very far from being a careless bystander. He observed much,

and learnt much. [Sidenote: GROWTH OF COTTON’S LITERARY AND PUBLIC

CORRESPONDENCE.] Had it not been for the lessons which those publicly

eventful years impressed on his receptive mind, he might have gone to

his grave with no other reputation than that of a profound antiquary,

and the Founder of the Cottonian Library.

Meanwhile, his pen worked as hard in the service of scholars, both at

home and abroad, as though he had been a busy proof-reader in a leading

printing-office. He supplied, at the same time, on the right hand and on

the left, precedents and formulæ, with a diligence and readiness which

would have won both fame and fortune for a long-accustomed conveyancer.

CAMDEN consults him, continually, for help in his historical labours.

Ben JONSON puts questions to him about intricate points of Roman

geography. [Sidenote: MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 239. (B. M.)]

William LISLE seeks COTTON’S aid in the prosecution of his studies of

the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons. [Sidenote: _Ib._, fol.

288, seqq.] PEIRESC consults him on questions in Numismatics. [Sidenote:

_Domestic Corresp._, Jas. I, vol. lxxxi, § 15. (R. H.)] If great

officers of State chance to quarrel amongst themselves about their

respective claims to carry before the King the sword _Curtana_, at some

special ceremony, they agree to refer the dispute to Sir Robert COTTON

and to abide—without fighting a duel—by his momentous decision. If a

courtier obtains for a friend the royal promise of an Irish viscounty he

writes to COTTON, asking him to choose an appropriate and well-sounding

title. [Sidenote: MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 378.] Roger MAYNWARING

begs him to determine the legal amount of burial-fees. [Sidenote: _Ib._,

fol. 252.] Dr. LAMBE asks him to settle conflicting pretensions to the

advowson of a living which, in old time, belonged to an abbey.

[Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 229.] Augustine VINCENT implores his help in a

tough question about patents of peerage. [Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 379.]

The Lord Keeper WILLIAMS seeks advice on questions of parliamentary form

and privilege. [Sidenote: Edwards’ _Life and Letters of Ralegh_, vol.

ii, p. 321.] RALEGH writes to him, from that ‘Bloody Tower’ which he was

about to turn into a literary shrine for all generations of Englishmen

to come, by composing in it a noble ‘History of the World’—beseeching

him to supply a desolate prisoner with historical materials. [Sidenote:

MS. Julius C. iii, fol. 204.] The Earl of ARUNDEL writes to him from

Padua, begging that he would compile ‘the story of my ancestors.’

[Sidenote: _Ib._, fol. 320.] The Earl of DORSET entreats him to make out

a list of the gifts which some early SACKVILLE had piously bestowed upon

the Church—not, however, with the smallest intention of himself

increasing them. And, anon, there comes to Sir Robert, from a third

great peer, the second of the Cecil Earls of Salisbury, an

entreaty—expressed in terms so urgent that one might call it a

supplication—‘Permit me, I pray you, to see my Lord of NORTHAMPTON’S

letters.... [Sidenote: Salisbury to Cotton, in MS. Cott., Julius C.,

iii.] I will return them unread, and unseen, by anybody,’ save himself.

And then the Secretary of State writes to him in an impetuous hurry

which made his letter scarcely legible:—‘If you be not here’ [_i. e._ at

the Council Chamber] ‘with those precedents for which there is present

use, we are all undone. [Sidenote: MS. Cott., Julius C., iii, fol. 57.]

For His Majesty doth so chide, that I dare not come in his sight.’

Along with this busy correspondence—of which, in these brief sentences I

have given the reader but a very inadequate and scanty sample—the

surviving records of these years of comparative retirement supply us

with abundant notices of the growth and of the sources, from time to

time, of the Cottonian Library. It would be no unwelcome task to tell

that story at length. It would, indeed, be but the paying, in very

humble coin, of a debt of gratitude to a liberal benefactor. But within

the compass of these pages so many careers have to be narrated that the

due proportions of some of them—and even of one so interesting as

COTTON’S—must needs be closely shorn. On this point it must, for the

present, suffice to say that the acquisition of many Cottonian State

Papers, and of such as carry on their face the most irrefragable marks

of former official ownership, can be distinctly traced. The assertion is

no hasty or inconsiderate one. It is founded on an acquaintance with the

Cottonian MSS., which is now, I fear, thirty years old, and on the

strength of which (when reading some recent assaults on the fair fame of

their Collector), I have been tempted to put certain well-known lines

into Sir Robert’s mouth:—

If I am

Traduced by o’er hasty tongues—which neither know

My faculties nor person, yet will be

The chroniclers of my doing—let me say

’Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake

That virtue must go through.

Were it not, however, for one pregnant circumstance in Sir Robert

COTTON’S subsequent life, all this would have but a very meager

attractiveness for nineteenth-century readers. The story of the growth

of a great library has its charm, but the sphere of potency is of small

dimension. Few but those who are themselves imbued with a spice of

literary antiquarianism ever enter within the narrow circle. Just in

like manner, that active literary and political correspondence—spreading

from Exeter to Durham, and from Venice to Copenhagen—would nowadays have

but a slender interest for anybody (not belonging to the scorned

fraternity of Oldbuck and Dryasdust), were it not for that great war

between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, of which, in one

sense, COTTON lived only long enough to see the gathering of forces, and

the early skirmishes, but in which, nevertheless, he played a part

second only to that played by ELIOT and by PYM. His close connection

with the Parliamentarian leaders of 1625–1629 lifts the whole story of

the man out of the petty circuit of mere ‘curiosities of literature,’

into the broad arena of the hard-won liberties of England.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S ALLIANCE WITH THE PARLIAMENTARIAN CHIEFS.]

All students of the deeds done in that arena now know—and their

knowledge is in no slight degree due to the persistent labours of a

living writer—that the battle of the ‘Petition of Right’ was even a

greater battle than Naseby or Marston Moor. They know that the

marshalling of the forces which, at a period antecedent to that famous

Petition, succeeded in winning a safe place on ‘the fleshy tables’ of

the hearts of Englishmen for those political immunities it

embodied—after the first written record had been vainly torn from the

Council Book—was a feat of arms not less brilliant, in its way, than was

that arraying of Ironsides, on much later days of the long strife, which

resulted in ‘Darwen stream with blood of Scots imbued,’ and placed

Worcester’s laureat wreath on the brow of CROMWELL. There are many

senses in which we have all of us (or nearly all) learnt to see the

truth of the familiar words, ‘Peace hath her victories, not less

renown’d than War,’ but in no sense have those words a deeper truth than

when we simply invert MILTON’S own application of them. By him they were

pointed at something yet to be done, and which, as he hoped, might be

done by CROMWELL. Nowadays, the historian has good ground to point them

at an earlier victory, won when the great soldier was but looking on at

the parliamentary contest, which he could not much advance, and might

very possibly have seriously impeded. The one thing which has transmuted

Robert COTTON from the status of a dead antiquary into that of a living

English worthy, is his close fellowship with ELIOT, RUDYARD, and PYM.

His rights to a place amongst our national worthies is due—more than all

else—to the fact that the services which he rendered in that strife of

heroes were services which one man, and only one, throughout broad

England had made himself capable of rendering. COTTON could no more have

led the parliamentary phalanx, than he could have led the Ironsides. To

stir men’s minds as ELIOT or PYM could stir them was about as much in

his power as it was to have invented logarithms, or to have written

‘_Lear_.’ But if he could not command the army, he could furnish the

arsenal. At that day and under the then circumstances that service was

priceless.

Sir Robert COTTON’S best and most memorable parliamentary service was

rendered under CHARLES; not under JAMES. But there is one incident in

his public career which occurred just before the change in the wearers

of the Crown that has a claim to mention, even in so brief a memoir as

this.

Among the revenges wrought by the ‘whirligigs of time’ before JAMES went

to his grave, was the necessity laid upon him to direct a search for

precedents how best to put a mark of disgrace on a Spanish Ambassador

for misconduct in his office. The man selected by the Duke of Buckingham

to make the search, and to report upon it, was Sir Robert COTTON. Some

weeks before he had been chosen to draw up, in the name of both Houses

of Parliament, a formal address to the King for the rupture of the

Spanish match.

[Sidenote: THE SEARCH FOR PRECEDENTS AGAINST AMBASSADORS.]

When BUCKINGHAM made that famous speech at the Conference of Lords and

Commons on the relations between England and Spain, to which COTTON’S

well-known _Remonstrance of the treaties of Amity and Marriage of the

Houses of Austria and Spain with the Kings of England_,[11] was to serve

as a preface, he spoke with considerable force and incisiveness.

[Sidenote: 1624. 27 April.] His arguments were not hampered by many

anxieties about consistency with his own antecedents. His words were

chosen with a view to clinch his arguments to English minds rather than

to spare Spanish susceptibilities. The ambassadors—there were then, I

think, two of them—were furious at a degree of plain-speaking to which

they had been little accustomed. They appealed to the King. They knew

that the versatile favourite, once loved, was now dreaded. They tried to

work on the King’s cowardice. The Duke, they told His Majesty, had

plotted the calling of Parliament expressly to have a sure tool with

which to keep him in control, should he prove refractory to the joint

schemes of the Duke and Prince CHARLES. ‘They will confine your

Majesty’s sacred person,’ said they, ‘to some place of pleasure, and

transfer the regal power upon the Prince.’

The framing of such an accusation, writes Sir Robert, in the Report

which he addressed to BUCKINGHAM on ‘_Proceedings against Ambassadors

have miscarried themselves_,’ would, by the laws of the realm, amount to

High Treason, had it been made by a subject. [Sidenote: _Relation of

Proceedings, &c._; MS. LANSD., 811, ff. 133–139.] He then adduces a long

string of precedents for the treatment of offending envoys; advises that

the Spaniards should first be immediately confined to their own abode;

and should then, by the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, in

person, be exhorted and required to ‘make a fair discovery of the ground

that led them so to inform the King.’

If, says Sir Robert, they refuse—‘as I believe they will’—then are they

authors of the scandal, and His Majesty should be addressed to send a

‘letter of complaint to the King of Spain, requiring justice to be done

according to the law of nations, which claim should the King of Spain

refuse, the refusal would amount to a declaration of war.’ This advice

was given by COTTON to the Duke on the 27th of April, 1624. Its author’s

momentary favour with the favourite of the now fast-rising sun was

destined (as we shall see presently) to be of extremely brief duration.

Pen-service of this sort was eminently congenial with Sir Robert

COTTON’S powers. To his vast knowledge of precedents he added much

acumen and just insight in their application. Though never admitted to

the Privy Council as a sworn councillor of the Crown, his service as an

adviser on several great emergencies was conspicuous.

And it did not stand alone. Small as were his natural gifts for oratory,

COTTON’S earnestness in the strife of politics prompted him, more than

once, to put aside his own sense of his disadvantages, and to endeavour

himself to strike a good blow, with the weapons which he knew so well

how to choose for others. [Sidenote: COTTON’S SPEECH IN THE PARLIAMENT

AT OXFORD.] On one of these occasions he prepared a speech which proved

very effective.

[Sidenote: 1625. 10 August.]

Curiously enough, whilst the best contemporary reports of that speech

agree amongst themselves in substance; they differ as to the name of the

speaker by whom it was actually uttered within the walls of the House of

Commons. Internal evidence and external authority are also agreed that

the speech, if not spoken, was at all events prepared by Sir Robert

COTTON. On that point, all parties coincide. But according to one

account, he both wrote and uttered it. According to another, he wrote

it; but was prevented from the intended delivery,—either by an

accidental absence from the House, or by some inward and unwaivable

misgiving which led him at the eleventh hour to hand over the task to

the able and well-accustomed tongue of his comrade ELIOT.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S? OR ELIOT’S?]

If we turn, for help—in our strait—to the admirable biography of ELIOT,

by Mr. FORSTER, we shall find that its author rather accepts the doubt,

than solves it. Inclining to the opinion that Sir John ELIOT was the

actual utterer, he thinks nevertheless that the best course is to ‘let

the speech stand double and inseparable; a memorial of a fast

friendship.’ It was the friendship, I may add, of two statesmen who

fought a good fight, side by side; until one of them was violently torn

out of the arena, and thrust into a dungeon, in the hope that slow

disease might unstring the eloquent tongue which honours could not

bribe, and terrors could not silence.

In Sir Robert’s posthumous tracts (as they were published by James

HOWELL) this speech has been printed as unquestionably spoken by him who

wrote it. But that publication—as I have had occasion to show already,

in relation to the ‘_Twenty-four Arguments_’—carries no grain of

authority. Spoken or simply composed by its author, the speech is alike

memorable in English history, and in the personal life of the man

himself.

The existence of the plague in London had led to the adjournment of the

first Parliament of King CHARLES to Oxford. It was there, and on the

10th of August, 1625, that the speech which—whether it came from the

lips of John ELIOT or of Robert COTTON—made a deep impression on the

House, was spoken. It gave the key-note to not a few speeches of a

subsequent date, and it contains passages which, in the event, came to

have on their face something of the stamp of prophecy.

Retrenchment in expenditure,—Parliamentary curb on Royal favourites,—No

trust of a transcendent power to any one Minister,—Less lavishness in

the bestowal of honours and dignities won by suit, or purchase, rather

than by public meed,—Wary distrust of Spain,—Abolition of unjust

monopolies and oppressive imposts;—these are amongst the earnest

counsels which (whether it were as writer, or as speaker) Sir Robert

COTTON impressed on his fellow-members in that memorable sitting at

Oxford. Both the pith and the sting of the Speech may be found in its

concluding words: ‘His Majesty hath ... wise, religious, and worthy

servants.... In loyal duty, we offer our humble desires that he would be

pleased to advise with them _together; ... not with young and single

counsel_.’ Well would it have been for CHARLES, had he taken those

simple words to heart, in good time.

To us, and now, there is a special interest in an incidental passage of

this speech which relates to SOMERSET. The reader has seen how Count

GONDOMAR’S secret testimony—just disinterred from Simancas—against

SOMERSET, as well as against COTTON, has recently been dealt with by an

eminent historian. [Sidenote: (See, also, heretofore, the foot-note to

p. 73.)] It is worth our while to remember some other words on that

subject spoken publicly in the Parliament at Oxford almost two centuries

and a half agone. They were spoken in the ears of men whose eyes had

looked with keen scrutiny into the Spanish envoy as well as into the

English minister. SOMERSET was still living. Men who then sat in the

Parliament Chamber knew every incident in his official life, and not a

few incidents in his private life, as well as every charge by

which—publicly or privately—he had been infamed. They knew, exactly, Sir

Robert COTTON’S position towards the fallen minister. If we choose to

suppose that ELIOT was now speaking what COTTON wrote, the inference is

unchanged. To those listeners Sir John and Sir Robert were known to be

politically ‘double and inseparable.’

[Sidenote: COTTON’S EULOGY ON LORD SOMERSET’S POLICY (August, 1625).]

The facts being so, what is the course taken by the speaker when he

finds occasion to remind the House of things that happened when ‘My Lord

of Somerset stood in state of grace, and had the trust of the Signet

Seal?’ Does he take a line of apology and use words of extenuation? Not

a whit. In the presence of some of the wisest and ablest of English

statesmen, he eulogises SOMERSET as an honest and unselfish minister of

the Crown. He asserts, that the Earl had discovered ‘the double

dealings’ of Spanish emissaries, and the dangers of the Spanish

alliance; and had made some progress in dissuading even King JAMES from

putting faith in Spaniards. Then, winding up this episode, in order to

pass to the topic of the hour, COTTON says: ‘Thus stood the effect of

SOMERSET’S power with His Majesty, when the clouds of his misfortune

fell upon him. What future advisers led to we may well remember.

[Sidenote: MS. LANSD.,[12] 491, fol. 195.] The marriage with Spain was

renewed; GONDOMAR declared an honest man; Popery heartened; His

Majesty’s forces in the Palatinate withdrawn; His Highness’s children

stripped of their patrimony; our old and fast allies disheartened; and

the King our now master exposed to so great a peril as no wise and

faithful counsel would ever have advised.’

At Court, speech such as this was deeply resented, instead of being

turned to profit. A curious little incident which occurred at the

Coronation of CHARLES in the next winter testifies, characteristically,

to the effect which it produced on the minds both of the new King and of

his favourite.

At the date of that ceremony, Sir Robert’s close political connection

with the future Parliamentary chiefs was but in its infancy. His views

of public policy were fast ripening, and had borne fruit. His private

friendships were more and more shaping themselves into accordance with

his tendencies in politics. Amongst those whose intimacy he

cultivated—besides that of ELIOT and others who have been mentioned

already—were Symonds D’EWES, and John SELDEN. [Sidenote: FRIENDS AND

HOSPITALITIES.] It was at COTTON’S hospitable table, in Old Palace Yard,

that the two men last named first made acquaintance with each other.

Both were scholars; both were strongly imbued with the true antiquarian

tinge; both had an extensive acquaintance with the black-letter lore of

jurisprudence, as well as with the more elegant branches of archæology;

and both, up to a certain point, had common aims in public life; yet

they did not draw very near together. SELDEN’S more robust mind, and his

wider sympathies, shocked some of the puritanic nicenesses of D’EWES.

Precisely the same remark would hold good of the relations between

COTTON and D’EWES. But a certain geniality of manners in Sir Robert,

combined with his grandee-like openness of hand and mind, attracted his

fellow-baronet in a degree which went some way towards vanquishing

D’EWES’ most ingrained scruples. [Sidenote: Harl. MS., as above.] ‘I had

much more familiarity with Sir Robert COTTON, than with Master SELDEN,’

jots down Sir Symonds in his Autobiographic _Diary_, and then he adds:

‘SELDEN being a man exceedingly puffed up with the apprehension of his

own abilities.’ That last sentence,—as the reader, perhaps, will agree

with me in thinking,—may possibly tell a more veracious tale of the

writer, than of the man whom it reproves.

Be that as it may, the dining-room in Old Palace Yard witnessed frequent

meetings of many groups of visitors of whose tabletalk it would be

delightful could we find as good a record as we have of the tabletalk in

Bolt Court, or at Streatham Park; or even as we have of almost

contemporary talk around the board at Hawthornden. Glorious old Ben

himself was a frequent guest at Sir Robert COTTON’S table. Until late in

JAMES’ reign, CAMDEN, when his growing infirmities permitted him to

journey up from Chislehurst, would still be seen there, now and again.

During the rare sessions of Parliament, many a famous member, as he left

the House of Commons, would join the circle. And the high discourse

about Greeks and Romans, about poetry and archæology, would be

pleasantly varied, by the newest themes of politics, by occasional

threnodies on the exorbitant power of court minions, but also by

occasional and glowing anticipations of a better time to come.

At one of these festive meetings, occurring not long before the

Coronation of CHARLES THE FIRST, the talk seems to have turned on the

coming solemnity. The plague at this time was still in London, though it

was fast abating. [Sidenote: COTTON AND THE CORONATION OF CHARLES I.]

That circumstance was to abridge the ceremonies, in order to permit the

Court to leave Westminster more quickly; but it was known that great

attention had been given by the King, personally, when framing the

programme, to the strict observance of ancient forms. D’EWES was one of

Sir Robert’s guests. Like his host, he had a great love for sight-seeing

on public occasions. And they would both anticipate a special pleasure

in witnessing the revival of certain coronation observances which had

been pretermitted during two centuries. In regard to the coronation oath

COTTON had been consulted, and he expected to be present, carrying in

his hand his own famous copy of the Gospels known as the ‘_Evangeliary

of King Ethelstan_.’ It was also expected that the watergate of Cotton

House would be the King’s landing-place, and that he would cross the

garden in order that he might enter the Palace more conveniently than he

could from its usual stairs, then under repair, or in need of it. Sir

Robert invited D’EWES, with other of his guests—not privileged to claim

places in Westminster Abbey on the great occasion—that at least they

might see their new sovereign, as he passed to take his crown.

When the morning came D’EWES was early in his visit, but, he found

Cotton House already filled with ladies. The Earl Marshal had decorated

the stairs to the river and the watergate very handsomely. Sir Robert

had done his part by decorating his windows, and his garden, more

handsomely still. But to the chagrin alike of the fair spectators and of

their host, as they were standing, in all their bravery, from watergate

to housedoor, to do respectful obeisance, the royal barge, by the King’s

own commandment—given at the moment, but pre-arranged by BUCKINGHAM—was

urged onward. To our amazement, writes Sir Symonds, ‘we saw the King’s

barge pass to the ordinary stairs, belonging to the backyard of the

Palace, where the landing was dirty ... and the incommodity was

increased by the royal barge dashing into the ground and sticking fast,

before it touched the causeway.’ [Sidenote: D’Ewes; in Harl. MS., 646,

as before.] His Majesty, followed by the Favourite, had to leap across

the mud,—certainly an unusual incident in a coronation show.

When COTTON—swallowing the mortification which he must have felt, on

behalf of his bevy of fair visitors, if not on his own—presently showed

himself in the Abbey, bearing the _Evangeliary_, he and it were

contemptuously thrust aside.

As a straw tells the turn of the wind, this trivial incident points to a

policy. The insults both within the Abbey and without, had been planned,

by the King and Duke, in order to mark the royal indignation at the

close fellowship of COTTON with ELIOT and the other Parliamentary

leaders. That the insults might be the more keenly felt, the Earl

Marshal was left in ignorance of the plan. It is a help to the truthful

portraiture of CHARLES, as well as to that of BUCKINGHAM, to note that

to insult a group of English ladies was no drawback to the pleasure of

putting a marked affront upon a political opponent. Perhaps, it

increased the zest, from the probable near relationship of some among

them to the offender.

But it is more important to note that another and graver intention in

respect to Sir Robert COTTON had been already formed. It was in

contemplation to do, in 1626, what was not really done until 1629.

[Sidenote: Mede to Stuteville; MS. Harl., 383, 18 April, 1626.]

BUCKINGHAM had advised the King to put the royal seals on the Cottonian

Library. That done, he thought, there would surely be an end to the

communication of formidable precedents for parliamentary warfare. More

wary counsellors however interposed with wiser advice. A fitting pretext

was lacking. Slenderness in the pretext would be no serious obstacle to

action. But some excuse there must be. The project, though abandoned for

the time, will be seen to have its value when considering, presently,

the strange story which is told, in the Privy Council Book, of the

‘_Proposition to bridle the impertinency of Parliaments_,’ and when

narrating the sequel of that high-handed act of power, which brought

COTTON’S head—as yet scarcely gray—with sorrow to the grave.

[Sidenote: ADVICE TO PRIVY COUNCIL ON CHANGE OF COINAGE.]

Although, thus early in the reign of CHARLES, a court insult was

inflicted upon Sir Robert COTTON, after a fashion the extreme silliness

of which rather serves to set off the intended malignity than to cloke

it, only a few months passed before his advice was called for in

presence of the Council Board, on an important question of home policy.

The question raised was that of an alteration of the coinage. The Privy

Council was divided in opinion. There was a desire for the advice of

statesmen who were not at the Board, but who were known to have studied

a subject beset with many difficulties. Among these, Sir Robert COTTON

was consulted. He appeared at the Council Table on the 2nd of September,

1626, and we have a report of his speech to the Lords, which from

several points of view is notable. [Sidenote: MS. LANSD., ff. 141–152.

(B. M.)[13]] [Sidenote: _Council Registers_, James I, vols. v and vi,

_passim_. (C. O.)] But a preliminary word or two needs to be said on

what may seem the singularity that a man who, in 1625, was fighting

zealously beside the Parliamentary patriots, should, in 1626, be

speaking at the Council Table as a quasi-councillor of the Crown.

It might be sufficient to point attention to the obvious difference

between questions affecting the liberty of the subject, and questions of

mere administration, were this the only occasion—or were it a fair

sample of the only class of occasions—in which COTTON appears as an

unofficial Councillor. But the fact is otherwise. And it is best to be

explained, partly, by the unsettled character of party connection during

the political strife of CHARLES’ reign, as well as long afterwards, and

partly by peculiarities belonging to the man himself. [Sidenote: _Life

of Sir John Eliot_, vol. i, p 468.] There are not many statesmen, even

of that period, of whom it could be said as the able biographer of Sir

John ELIOT says of Sir Robert COTTON: ‘He acted warmly with ELIOT and

with the patriots in the first Parliament of CHARLES. At the opening of

the third, he was tendering counsel to the King, _of which the

obsequious forms have yet left no impression unfavourable to his

uprightness and honour_.’ The result is unusual. How came it to pass?

Perhaps the preceding pages may have already suggested to the reader’s

mind more than one possible and plausible answer to this question. Here

it may suffice to say that while Sir Robert COTTON was plainly at one

with the Parliamentarian leaders in the main points of their civil

policy, he never went to the extreme lengths of the puritanic faith,

either in things secular, or in matters pertaining to Religion. On some

religious questions he differed from them widely. In secular matters, a

tyrannic Parliament would have been as little to his liking as a

despotic king. Neither friend nor enemy—GONDOMAR excepted—ever called

him a Puritan (or pretended-Puritan) in his lifetime, any more than they

would have called him a Republican. His ultimate divergence was not

cloaked. It was no bar to the entire respect, or to the love and close

fellowship, of men like ELIOT, just because it was frankly avowed, and

had no selfish aim. COTTON,—had he lived long enough,—would probably

have ranged himself, at last, with the Cavaliers, rather than with the

Roundheads. He would have had FALKLAND’S misgivings, and FALKLAND’S

sorrow, but I think he would not have lacked FALKLAND’S self-devotion

also.

And, in another point, he resembled Lord FALKLAND. Both would have

advised CHARLES to yield much of so-called ‘prerogative.’ Neither of

them would have bade him to yield a grain of true royal honour. In later

years, some words which COTTON wrote,—in 1627,—for the King’s eye may

well have come back painfully into CHARLES’ memory:—‘To expiate the

passion of the People,’ said Sir Robert, ‘with sacrifice of any of His

Majesty’s servants, I have ever found to be no less fatal _to the

Master_ than to the Minister, in the end.’

The question of the Coinage, on which he was called into Council in

September 1626, had caused no small measure of discussion whilst JAMES

was still on the throne. [Sidenote: THE ADVICE GIVEN BY SIR R. COTTON ON

MINT AFFAIRS.] Many merchants of London had raised the old and hacknied

cry of complaint against an alleged ‘vast transportation of gold and

silver from England’ to the Continent. Others said that the complaint,

if not groundless, was misdirected. The following Minute of the Privy

Council will shew how the question stood in that early stage. It was

drawn up in November, 1618.

[Sidenote: Council to the King, 30 Nov., 1618; James I, vol. iv, p. 45.

(C. O.)]

‘Being by Your Majesty’s commandment to take into our consideration the

state of the Mint and to advise of the way or means how to bring bullion

more plentifully into the Kingdom, and to be coined there, as also how

to stop the great exportation of treasure out of the Realm,—a matter of

which the State hath been jealous: For our better information and Your

Majesty’s satisfaction we thought it fit first to know from the Office

of your Mint what quantity of gold and silver hath been there coined in

the last seven years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the seven years

last past of Your Majesty. And we find that in the said seven years of

the Queen there was coined in gold and silver of all sorts £948,713

sterling, whereas in the seven late years of Your Majesty’s reign there

hath been coined of all sorts, in gold and silver, £1,603,998. So as,

comparing the one with the other, there hath been coined of both species

in the said seven years of Your Majesty’s reign £655,285 sterling, more

than in the seven years aforesaid of the Queen, the difference being

almost three parts to one. Next we required a certificate from the

Goldsmiths of London of the Plate that hath been made in those years

within the City of London; and it appeareth that there was made and

stamped in their hall the last seven years of Queen Elizabeth of silver

plate the worth of £22,187 more than in the seven later years of Your

Majesty’s reign. But upon the whole matter we cannot find and do humbly

certify the same unto Your Majesty as our opinion that there hath been

of late any such vast transportation of gold and silver into France and

the Low Countries as was supposed; neither that there is any such

notorious diminution of treasure generally in the Kingdom—at the least

of gold—since it is apparent that there hath been a far greater quantity

in the total coined within these seven years last past than in the last

seven years of the late Queen. Besides Your Majesty may be pleased to

observe that the making of so much silver plate cannot be the principal

cause of the decay of the Mint since there was more plate made in London

[in] those last seven years of the Queen,—when there came more silver to

be coined in the Mint,—than there hath been used of late years, when

silver in the Mint hath been so scarce though Gold more plentiful.... In

the mean time we do humbly offer ... that there is no necessity ... to

raise your coin, either in the one kind or in the other. [Sidenote:

_Registers of Privy Council_, as above, p. 46. (C. O.)] But rather that

the same may draw with it many inconveniences; and because the noise

thereof through the City of London and from thence to other parts of the

Realm, as we understand, hath already done hurt and in some measure

interrupted and distracted the course of general commerce, we think it

very requisite ... that some signification be forthwith made from this

Table time to raise your coins.’

The course thus recommended—and in the recommendation the Council seems

to have been well nigh unanimous—was precisely the course JAMES did not

wish to take. The Council Books abound with proof how hard it was to

dissuade the King from adopting this ‘intended project of enhancing the

coin [_i. e._ by debasing the standard], though, as COTTON afterwards

said at the Council Table, to do so would trench, both into the honour,

the justice, and the profit’ [_i. e._ the real and ultimate profit] ‘of

my royal Master very far.’

In his address at the Board, Sir Robert made an almost exhaustive

examination of the history of the English Mint. He did it with much

brevity and pith. His views about foreign trade are, of course, not free

from the fallacies which were accepted as aphorisms by very nearly every

statesman then living. But his advice on the immediate question at issue

is marked by sound common sense, by insight and practical wisdom.

[Sidenote: MS. LANSD., 811, ff. 148–152 (B. M.) [Compare the Report of

Proceedings in the House of Commons, Feby. 1621. (_Parl. Hist._, vol. i,

c. 1188–1194).]] His speech told, and he followed it up by framing, as

Chairman of a Committee, (1) an _Answer to the Propositions delivered by

some Officers of the Mint_; and (2) _Certain General Rules collected

concerning Money and Bullion out of the late Consultation at Court_.

Copies of both exist amongst the Harleian and Lansdowne MSS., and both,

together with the Speech, are printed in the _Posthuma_ (although not

without some of the Editor’s characteristic inaccuracies).

The next question which it was Sir Robert’s task to discuss before the

Privy Council was a much more momentous question than that of the

Coinage. It was, potentially, both to Sovereign and to people, an issue

of life or death.

In January, 1628 [N. S.], he delivered, at the Board, the substance of

the remarkable Discourse which has been more than once printed under the

title, ‘_The Danger wherein this Kingdom now Standeth, and the Remedy_.’

[Sidenote: DISCOURSE ON THE CALLING OF A PARLIAMENT. 1628. Jany.] The

courtliness of its tone no more detracts from its incisiveness of

stroke, than a jewelled hilt would detract from the cleaving sweep of a

Damascus blade, when wielded by well-knit sinews. It led instantly to

the calling of the Parliament. [Sidenote: MS. LANSD., 254, ff. 258,

seqq.] But neither its essential and true loyalty to the King, nor the

opportune service which it rendered to the country was to make the

fortunes of its author any exception to those which—sooner or

later—befell every councillor of CHARLES THE FIRST, who, in substance if

not in form, was wont to put Country before King.

In that third Parliament of CHARLES Sir Robert himself had no seat. In

the Parliament which preceded it he sat for Old Sarum, having lost his

seat for Huntingdonshire. But he continued to be the active ally and the

influential councillor of the leaders of opposition to strained

prerogatives. When the Parliament assailed Bishops NEILE and LAUD, the

inculpated prelates, it is said, threw upon COTTON as much of their

anger as they well could have done had he led the assault in person.

The opportunity was not very far to seek. [Sidenote: THE ‘PROPOSITION TO

BRIDLE PARLIAMENTS.’ 1629. October.] Not long after the dissolution in

March, 1629, of that Parliament of the assembling of which Sir Robert

COTTON’S patriotic effort had been the immediate occasion, and to some

of the effective blows of which he had helped to give vigour, some

courtier or other brought to CHARLES’ hands a political tract, in

manuscript, and told him that copies of it were in the possession of

several statesmen. Those—with one exception—who were then named to the

King were men wont to be held in greater regard in the country than at

Court. The pamphlet bore for its title: ‘_The Proposicion for Your

Majesties Service ... to secure your Estate and to bridle the

impertinencie of Parliaments_.’

The consequences of this small incident were destined to prove of large

moment. The earliest mention we have of it occurs in a letter written by

the Archbishop of York—himself a Privy Councillor—to Sir Henry VANE, in

November, 1629: ‘The Vice-Chancellor,’ says Archbishop HARSNET, ‘was

sent to Sir Robert COTTON to seal up his library, and to bring himself

before the Lords of the Council.’ [Sidenote: _Domest. Corresp._, Charles

I, vol. cli, § 24. (R. H.)] In the words that follow the Archbishop is

evidently speaking from what he had been told, not from his personal

knowledge. ‘There was found,’ he proceeds to say, ‘in his custody a

pestilential tractate which he had fostered as a child, containing a

project how a Prince may make himself an absolute tyrant. [Sidenote:

_Ib._] _This pernicious device he had communicated to divers Lords._’

CHARLES was presently in intense excitement about the matter. Its next

stage cannot be better or more briefly told, than in the words which the

King himself addressed to his assembled Councillors—in unusual array,

for they were twenty-one in number—and afterwards caused to be entered

upon the Council Book:

[Sidenote: 1629. 15 Nov.]

‘This day His Majestie, sitting in Counsell, was pleased to imparte to

the whole Boarde the cause for which the [Sidenote: [_Council Register_,

vol. v, p. 495.]] Erles of CLARE, SOMERSET, and BEDFORDE, Sir Robert

COTTON, and sundry other persons of inferior qualitie, had bene lately

restrained and examined by a speciall Committee appointed by him for

that purpose, which cause was this:—

‘His Majestie declared that there came to his handes, by meere accedent,

the coppie of a certain “_Discourse_” or “_The Proposicion_” (which was

then, by his commandement, read at the Boarde), pretended to be written

“for His Majesties service,” and bearing this title—”_The Proposicion

for Your Majestie’s Service conteineth twoe partes: [Sidenote:

PROCEEDINGS AGAINST SIR ROBERT COTTON IN THE PRIVY COUNCIL.] The one to

secure your Estate, and to bridle the impertinencie of Parlements; the

other to encrease Your Majestie’s Revenue much more then it is_.”

‘Now the meanes propounded in this Discourse for the effecting thereof

are such as are fitter to be practised in a Turkish State then amongst

Christians, being contrarie to the justice and mildnesse of His

Majestie’s Government, and the synceritie of his intentions, and

therefore cannot be otherwise taken then for a most scandalous

invention, proceding from a pernitious dessein, both against His

Majestie and the State, which, notwithstanding, the aforesaid persons

had not onely read—and concealed the same from His Majestie and his

Counsell—but also communicated and divulged it to others.

‘Whereupon His Majestie did farther declare that it is his pleasure that

the aforesaid three Erles, and Sir Robert COTTON, shall answere this

their offense in the Court of Star Chamber, to which ende they had

alreadie bene summoned, and that now they shoulde be discharged and

freed from their restraint and permitted to retourne to their severall

houses, to the ende that they mighte have the better meanes to prepare

themselves for their answere and defense.

‘And, lastly, he commanded that this his pleasure should be signified by

the bearer unto them, who were then attending without,—having, for that

purpose, bene sent for. His Majestie, having given this Order and

direccion, rose from the Boarde, and when he was gone, the three Erles

were called in severally and the Lorde Keeper signified to each of them

His Majestie’s pleasure in that behalfe; shewing them, with all, how

gratiously he had bene pleased to deale with them, both in the maner of

the restraint, which was only during the time of the examination of the

cause (a thing usuall and requisite specially in cases of that

consequence), and in that they had bene committed to the custodie of

eminent and honorable persons by whom they were treated according to

their qualities; and lykewise in the discharge of them now from their

restraint that they may have the better convenience and meanes to

prepare themselves for the defense of their cause in that legall coursse

by which His Majestie had thought fit to call them to an account and

tryall.

‘The like was also signified by his Lordship to Sir Robert COTTON, who

was further tolde that although it was His Majestie’s pleasure that his

Studies’ [meaning, that is, his Library and Museum,] ‘shoulde, as yett,

remaine shut up, yet he might enter into them and take such writtings

wherof he shoulde have use, provided that he did it in the presence of a

Clerke of the Counsell; [Sidenote: _Council Register_, Chas. I, vol. v,

ff. 495, 496 (C. O.).] and whereas the Clerke attending hath the keyes

of two of his Studies he might put a seconde lock on either of them so

that neither dores might be opened, but by him and the said Clerke both

together.’

A reader who now looks back on this singular transaction—and who has

therefore the advantage of looking at it by the stern-lights of

history,—will be likely to believe that the chief offence of the

pamphlet lay (in a certain sense,) in its truth. [Sidenote: CHARACTER

AND AUTHORSHIP OF THE ‘PROPOSITION TO BRIDLE PARLIAMENTS.’] It was the

much too frank exposition of a policy which clung very close to CHARLES’

heart, though he could ill afford—in 1629—to have it openly avowed. The

undeniable fact that this ‘_Proposition for Your Majesty’s Service_’ was

indeed fitter for the latitude of Constantinople, than for that of

London, sounds but awkwardly on the royal lips, when connected with an

assertion (in the same breath,) of the ‘justice and mildness’ of the

King’s own government. The indictment which his Parliament brought

against CHARLES,—and which History has endorsed,—could hardly be packed

into briefer words than those which the King himself used that day at

the Council Board. His notions of kingly rule, like his father’s, were

in truth much better suited for the government of Turkey than for the

government of England.

Sir Robert COTTON, however, had no more to do with the authorship of the

‘_Proposition_’ than had CHARLES himself. The author was Sir Robert

DUDLEY. The time of its composition was at least fifteen years before

the date of the imprisonment of COTTON and his companions in disfavour.

The place of its birth was Florence. It cannot even be proved that

COTTON had any personal knowledge of the fact that the offensive tract

had been found in his own library. He had recently read it, indeed,—in

common with BEDFORD, CLARE, and Oliver SAINT-JOHN, and no doubt, like

them, had read it with many surging thoughts,—but he had read it in a

recent transcript, written by a clerk.

Of Robert DUDLEY’S motive in writing his ‘_Proposition_’ we have also no

proof. But the presumptive and internal evidence is so strong, as to

make proof almost superfluous. The tract bears witness, between the

lines, that it was composed to win the favour—or at least to arrest the

despoiling hand—of King JAMES. And there is hardly a suggestion in it

which might not be backed by some parallel passage in the writings, or

the speeches, of JAMES himself, when expatiating on kingly prerogatives

in some mood of mind a little more foolish than usual, or when

striving—only too successfully—to train up his successor to follow in

his own path. It seems like an irony of Fate to find that (in all

probability,—for here again the proof is not quite clinching,) the

King’s informer, against COTTON and the other offenders, was WENTWORTH,

who, not many years after 1629, was to sum up views of policy much akin

to Robert DUDLEY’S in the memorable word ‘_Thorough_.’

COTTON himself believed that this apparently trivial incident cost him

his life. He said not long before his death,—‘It has killed me.’ We

shall probably never know whether DUDLEY’S tract had anything to do with

bringing about in the mind of WENTWORTH that eventful change of

political views which is known to have passed over it (about the time

when the incriminated manuscript was sent so eagerly from hand to hand),

and which, in a few years more, was to work his death also. But one can

hardly avoid, in passing, a momentary thought on the curious possibility

that a pamphlet, written at Florence, in the hope that it might save,

for the writer, some wreck or remnant of a despoiled inheritance,—may

have proved fatal alike to the close political friend of ELIOT, and to

the close political friend of LAUD. A tract of such potency may well

claim a few words about its contents. They bear in every line the stamp

of mental energy, and also the stamp of moral recklessness.

[Sidenote: CAREER OF SIR R. DUDLEY, (THE TRUE AUTHOR).]

Sir Robert DUDLEY knew well enough that a rooted dislike of Parliaments

was, in JAMES’S mind, combined with a besetting dread of them. He knew

that, between hate and fear, a Parliament was like a nightmare, for ever

crouching behind the royal pillow. It is the purpose of his tract to

tell the King how to drive the nightmare away. He recommends, amongst

other and minor measures, the erection of a strong fortress in all the

chief towns of the Kingdom, to be manned by trained bands, and to be

placed in such situations as shall command the high roads. In addition

to these measures, your Majesty, he says, must set up a strict system of

passports, for travellers. Nor is all this merely a new and more

elaborate version of the old story of belling the cat. The writer of

this counsel knows, perfectly, that already the King’s poverty is the

Parliament’s power; and that to build fortresses and array soldiers

needs a full purse, not an exhausted one. But he says,—as WENTWORTH said

after him,—that soldiers can be set to work upon good hopes of the pay

to come. A resolute King, he thinks, with resolute troops at his back,

could do in England what had so often been done in Italy. He could tithe

men’s estates. He could make salt and some other things of prime

necessity a royal monopoly. He could set a tariff on dignities of

honour. He could establish sumptuary laws, such as should make the

vanity and jealousy of thriving nobodies—men with full pockets and blank

pedigrees—willing contributors to the King’s Exchequer. He could buy up

improvident leases of Crown lands, and resell them at a large profit.

The shortsightedness of such advice as this is now obvious enough. But

advice quite as shortsighted and far less plausibly couched,—for the

eyes that were to read it,—had been fruitful of result, when offered to

Stuarts. Nor was the man who now offered it to CHARLES a mere clever

talker. He was a man who had already acquitted himself with conspicuous

ability in several spheres of action, lying widely apart.

Sir Robert DUDLEY possessed many splendid accomplishments. He had been

educated by the same ripe scholar who afterwards became tutor to Prince

HENRY. At the age of one and twenty, he had put himself into the lists

with RALEGH, as navigator and discoverer, by heading an expedition to

the Oronoco. [Sidenote: THE CAREER OF SIR ROBERT DUDLEY.] In the course

of that expedition he had captured nine Spanish ships; one of them of

twice his own strength. At three and twenty, he had fought, side by side

with RALEGH, in the naval battle in the bay of Cadiz; had handled his

ship with an ability which won the praise of his rivals; and had then

fought, in the land attack, side by side with ESSEX. When his own

unbridled passions and resentments gave a fatal opening for the equally

unbridled cupidity of JAMES, and of JAMES’S courtiers, to despoil him of

a great estate, and to drive him into exile, he showed that he knew how

to snatch honour out of defeat. He laid the foundation of a new English

trade with Italy and created—it is not saying too much—the maritime

prosperity of Leghorn. He drained vast Italian marshes, and made corn to

grow where corn had never grown before. The man who, in early life, had

won fame at once as a navigator full of pluck and resource, and as an

able soldier by sea and land:—and who, on attaining full manhood, had

shown himself both a clever diplomatist and a great engineer;—did not go

to his foreign grave before he had won literary fame with the pen, and

scientific fame at the furnace of the chemist. He had, in its fullest

measure, the versatility and the energy of his race. English family

biography, I suppose, can scarcely show a stranger group of lives than

the successive lives of the last four DUDLEYS of that line:—Edmund, the

Minister of HENRY VII, and author of _The Tree of the Commonwealth_;

NORTHUMBERLAND, the subduer of EDWARD VI, and the murderer of Jane GREY;

LEICESTER, the Favourite of ELIZABETH; Sir Robert, the self-made exile,

and the maker of Leghorn. Whilst English history, in its long course,

can scarcely match the fatality which seems to have foredoomed powers of

mind and strength of will, such as are rarely repeated in four

successive generations, to teem with evil instead of good for England.

Such, in few words, was the career of the man, the forgotten production

of whose pen was to shorten the life of a statesman whose only

connection with it—so far as the evidence goes—lay in the fact that a

copy chanced to turn up in his library; fell under the keen eye of a

lawyer who thought that something might be made of it; and was then

copied—probably by some clerk, who was in the habit of making

transcripts for students to whom money was less precious than time.[14]

In some points of the story there is still considerable uncertainty. But

so much as this seems to be established. How the tract came, at the

first, into Sir Robert COTTON’S library there is no evidence whatever to

shew.

It is not the least curious point in this transaction that the Earl of

SOMERSET should have been mixed up with it. He had been released from

the Tower almost eight years before (namely, on the 28th of January,

1622), but was prohibited from living near the Court. At first, he was

ordered to restrict himself to one or other of two old mansions in

Oxfordshire—Caversham and Grey’s Court. [Sidenote: _Council Registers,

James I_, vol. v, pp. 230, 425 (C. O.).] Afterwards, his option was

enlarged, by including, in the license, Aldenham, in Hertfordshire. It

is evident that, after BUCKINGHAM’S death, he began to hope that a

political career might be still possible for him. And statesmen like

BEDFORD and CLARE—as well as COTTON—kept up with him a correspondence.

More than once or twice, coming events had cast their preliminary

shadows over Sir Robert, in relation to the very matter which so vexed

his heart in the winter of 1629. ‘Sir Robert COTTON’S Library is

threatened to be sealed up’ is a sentence which made its occasional

appearance in news-letters, long before King CHARLES hurried down to the

Council Chamber to vent his indignation on the handing about of DUDLEY’S

‘_Proposition to bridle Parliaments_.’

[Sidenote: BEN JONSON AND THE VERSES TO FELTON.]

One cause of the rumour lay doubtless in the known enmity between

BUCKINGHAM and the great antiquary. This enmity, on one occasion,

brought Ben JONSON into peril. Ben was fond of visiting Cotton House. He

liked the master, and he liked the table; and he was wont to meet at it

men with whom he could exchange genial talk. On one such occasion, just

a year before the Florence pamphlet incident, some verses went round the

table at Cotton House, with the dessert. They began, ‘_Enjoy thy

bondage_,’ and ended with the words ‘_England’s ransom here doth lie_.’

Only two months had then passed since BUCKINGHAM’S assassination, and

these verses were, or were supposed to be, addressed to FELTON. We can

now imagine more than one reason why such lines may have been curiously

glanced at, over Sir Robert’s table, without assuming that there was any

triumphing over a fallen enemy; still less any approval of murder. But

there seems to have been present one guest too many. [Sidenote:

_Domestic Corresp. Charles I_, vol. cxix, § 33.] Some informer told the

story at Whitehall, and JONSON found himself accused of being the author

of the obnoxious verses. He cleared himself; but not, it seems, without

some difficulty and annoyance.

The release from immediate restraint of the prisoner of November ’29 was

no concession to any prompting of CHARLES’ own better nature.

Fortunately for Sir Robert COTTON, his companions in the offence were

peers. Their fellow-peers shewed, quietly but significantly, that

continued restraint would need to be preceded by some open declaration

of its cause. During the course of the proceedings which followed their

release it was asserted—I do not know by whom—that not only had the

‘_Proposition_’ been copied, but that an ‘_Answer_’ to it had been

either written, or drafted. And that the reply, like the original tract,

would be found in Sir Robert’s library.

This somewhat inexplicable circumstance in the story is nowhere

mentioned, I think, except in a Minute of the Privy Council. The Minute

runs thus:—

‘A Warrant directed to Thomas MEWTAS, Esq. ... and Laurence WHITAKER,

Esq. [Clerks of Council] autorising them to accompanie Sir Robert

COTTON, Knight, to his house and assist him in searching amongst the

papers in his studie or elsewhere, for certaine notes or draughtes for

an answer to a “_Proposicion_” pretended to be made “_for His Majesties

Service_” touching the securing of His Estate, and also to seeke

diligently amongst his papers, and lykewise the trunkes and chambers of

Mr. JAMES, and [of] FLOOD, Sir Robert COTTON’S servant, as well for anie

such notes, as also for coppies of the said “_Proposicion_,” and for

other wrytings, of that nature, which may import prejudice to the

government and His Majestie’s service.’ [Sidenote: _Council Registers,

Charles I_; vol. 5, pp. 493, 495. 1629. Nov. 10. Whitehall. (C. O.).]

The new search, it seems, had not the desired, or any important, result.

A year passed away. The proceedings in the Star Chamber proved to be

almost as fruitless, as had been the vain, but repeated, searches which

wearied the legs and perplexed the minds of Clerks of Council and of

Messengers of the Secretary’s office. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp.

Chas. I_, clxvii, § 65, seqq. (R. H.)] But the locks and seals were

still kept on the Cottonian Library. Sir Robert and his son (afterwards

Sir Thomas) petitioned the King over and over again. But CHARLES had set

his face as a flint, and would not listen. In vain he was told that the

Manuscripts were perishing by neglect; and that, as they occupied some

of the best rooms, the continued locking up made their owner to be like

a prisoner, in his own house. In order to go into any one of them he had

to send to Whitehall, to request the presence of a Clerk of the Council.

[Sidenote: COTTON’S DECLINE OF HEALTH.—THE ARTFUL QUACK AND THE WARY

PATIENT.]

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that his friends noticed

with anxiety his changed appearance. His ruddy countenance became sallow

and haggard. It grew, says his associate D’EWES, to be of ‘a blackish

paleness near to the semblance and hue of a dead visage.’ His somewhat

portly frame stooped and waned. Life had still some charms for him,—so

long at least as he could hope even faintly, for an opportunity of

returning, at last, to his beloved studies. He was told of the growing

repute of a certain Dr. FRODSHAM, who combined (it seems) experiments at

the retort and still of the chemist, with the clinical practice of the

physician,—when he could get it. Sir Robert sent for him and desired

that he would bring a certain restorative balsam, or other nostrum, that

had become the talk of the town. The worthy practitioner preferred to

send his answer in writing. With great frankness, he said to his

correspondent: ‘I have now an extraordinary occasion for money....

Neither is it my accustomed manner to distil for any body, without some

payment beforehand. So, noble Sir, if pleas you, send here, _by this

berer_, £17 and 12_s._, for so much the druges will cum tow. I confes

that way I worke is deare, yett must say, upon my life, that I will

make’ [you] ‘as sound and able of body, as at thirty-five,—and’ [this]

‘within five weeks.’ [Sidenote: MS. Harl., 7002, fol. 318; H. Frodsam to

Sir R. Cotton (B. M.).] But the eye for which this naïve epistle was

meant was an eye keen enough to detect the difference between corn and

chaff. [Sidenote: _Ib._] ‘I did,’ replied Sir Robert, ‘expect something

of fact, to make me confident; before I could venture either my trial or

my purse.... Promises I have often met and rejected. Error of judgment

must be, to me, of more loss than the money.’

By way of addition to the combined anxieties of failing health, and of a

bitter grief, there came now to be heaped upon COTTON’S shoulders the

heavier burden of a conspiracy to assail his moral character.

Large as had been his expenditure on his noble collections, and

openhanded as was his manner of life and of giving, Sir Robert COTTON

was still wealthy. Some persons who had benefited by his repeated

generosity thought they saw an opening, in the summer of 1630, to

increase the gain by a clever and lucrative plot. The method they took

reads, nowadays, less like a real incident in English literary

biography, than like one of those—

... last, best, of the ‘_Hundred Merry Tales_’

Of how [a grave and learned sage] devised

To carry off a spouse that moped too much,

And cured her of the vapours in a trice;

· · · · ·

For now the husband—playing Vulcan’s part,—

... started in hot pursuit

To catch the lovers, and came raging up;

Cast then his net, and call’d neighbours to see

The convicts in their rosy impudence.

The victim of this plot was now in his sixtieth year. Whatever may have

been the sins of his youth, there was obvious risk in a contrivance to

extort money by telling such a tale as that, about a man the fever of

whose blood must needs have abated; even had he not been already broken

down under cumulative weight of the sorrow and hunger of the heart.

[Sidenote: THE CONSPIRACY OF WILCOX AND STEVENSON AGAINST SIR R.

COTTON.] The intended victim, too, was a man with troops of friends. But

the conspirators, it is evident, thought that Sir Robert’s known

disgrace at Court would tell as a good counterpoise in their favour. A

man already in circumstances of peril would, they thought, be likely to

open his pursestrings rather than incur the burden of a new accusation.

On a June morning in 1630 Sir Robert COTTON received an urgent letter

from an elderly woman—one Amphyllis FERRERS—who had the claim upon him

of distant kinship, and upon whom, in that character, he had bestowed

many kindnesses. The letter made a new appeal to his compassion; told

him of the distresses of the writer’s daughter—married not long before

to a needy man—and besought him to pay them a visit; that he might judge

of their necessities with his own eyes. Both mother and daughter lived

together in Westminster, at no great distance from Cotton House.

Sir Robert paid the invited visit; was told of various family plans

connected with the recent marriage, and, amongst other things, of a

pressing need for some household furniture. When the talk turned upon

furniture, he was asked to look, himself, at an upstairs room, and form

his own opinion about the request. Both mother and daughter went up with

him; but the three had hardly entered the room, when a loud battering

noise was heard on the other side of the thin wall which separated them

from the neighbouring house. And, presently a still greater noise was

heard from the rush of footsteps upon the stairs.

The daughter, it seems, was not in the plot. Her husband had

ostentatiously ridden away from the door on the previous morning, to go

into the country, for an absence of some days;—exactly like a hero in

BOCCACCIO. At night, he quietly returned, and took up his abode, by

preconcert with his neighbours, next door. In the morning he lay with

those neighbours in ambush. When they all tumultuously rushed up

stairs—into the man’s own abode—they were full of indignation at Sir

Robert’s wantonness; but,—unfortunately for their story—in their eager

haste they entered the room almost as soon as he himself had entered it,

with his two companions. Nevertheless, they persisted in their

accusation; permitting, however, when the first burst of virtuous wrath

had somewhat subsided, the appearance of a sufficient indication that

they were not wholly averse from listening to a reasonable proposal.

There was a way, and one way only, in which that fierce wrath might be

appeased. Sir Robert, however, was indignant in his turn. The purse of

the intended victim remained stubbornly closed.

[Sidenote: 1630. July—Decr.]