that Your Majesty hath no purpose at this Book I, time to raise your coins.' 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. 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. Chap. II. COTTON. MS. LANSD., 811, ff. 148152 (B. M) [Compare the Proceedings Report of in the House of Commons, Fey, 1621. (Parl. Hist., vol. i, c. 1188 1194).] BOOK I, Chap. II. LIFE OF COTTON. DISCOURSE ON THE A PARLIA In January, 1628 [N. S.], he delivered, at the Board, the substance of the remarkable Discourse which has SIR ROBERT been more than once printed under the title, The Danger wherein this Kingdom now Standeth, and the Remedy,' The courtliness of its tone no more detracts CALLING OF from its incisiveness of stroke, than a jewelled hilt would detract from the cleaving sweep of a Damascus blade, when 1629. Jany. wielded by well-knit sinews. It led instantly to the calling of the Parliament. But neither its essential and true loyalty MS. LANSD, 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. 254, ff. 258, seqq. SITION TO BRIDLE PAR- 1629. 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. Not long after the dissolution in March, 1629, of that Parliament THE 'PROPO- 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 October. Chap. II. Court. The pamphlet bore for its title: The Proposicion BOOK I, 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 LIFE OF SIR ROBEET Corresp., Charles I, vol. cli, § 24. (R. H.) 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.' In the words that follow Domest 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. This pernicious device he had communicated to divers 1. 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: 15 Nov. [Council Re p. 495.] 6 This day His Majestie, sitting in Counsell, was pleased 1629. to imparte to the whole Boarde the cause for which the Erles of CLARE, SOMERSET, and BEDFORDE, Sir Robert gister, vol. v, 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" BOOK I, LIFE OF SIR ROBERT COITON. PROCEED INGS SIR ROBERT COTTON IN or "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: 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 BOOK 1, Chap. II. COTTON. 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 SI ROBERT 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; 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.' Council Register, Chas. I, vol v, ff. 495, 496 (c.o.). 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 CHARACTER sense,) in its truth. 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 AND AU- LIAMENTS.' |