Chap. II. LIFE OF there is still considerable uncertainty. But so much as this BOOK I, seems to be established. How the tract came, at the first, into Sir Robert COTTON's library there is no evidence whatever to shew. SIR ROBERT 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. After- Concil wards, his option was enlarged, by including, in the license, Aldenham, in Hertfordshire. It is evident that, after than he was willing that Sir Robert should know. The letters are without dates, after the fashion of the times, and this adds to their obscurity. But one thing is plain. The writer ran away from London, either when he knew that the first inquiry was imminent or thought it probable that a renewed inquiry would be set on foot. In one of these letters, after many professions of attachment, he writes thus: 'From you, at this time, I should not have parted, if the exigence and penurie of my life had not forc'd a silent retreat into myself, and my owne home at Corpus Christi College;' and then, a fit of poesy-such as it was-coming over him, he ends his letter metrically, as thus : 'The poore young Russian youth, that slave Was to the Prince, and trustie knave Το my deere Harrie Wilde, when wee Forsooke that Northern Barbarie, His evills that I would not beare In minde, the which none, truely, were. This youth I well remember, and In neere, loe, manner kisse your hand; You will no worse remember me.' -MS. Harl. 7002, f. 118. Registers, James I, vol. v, pp. 230, 425 (C.O.). BOOK I, Chap. II. BUCKINGHAM'S death, he began to hope that a political career might be still possible for him. And statesmen SIR ROBERT like BEDFORD and CLARE-as well as COTTON-kept up COTTON. BEN JONSON VERSES TO Domestic Charles I, vol. cxix, $33. 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.' 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. 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 BOOK I, 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: Chap. II. '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 Registers, wrytings, of that nature, which may import prejudice to the government and His Majestie's service.' The new search, it seems, had not the desired, or any important, Nov. 10. result. Council Charles I; vol. 5, pp. 493, 495. 1629. Whitehall. (C. O.). BOOK I, A year passed away. The proceedings in the Star Chamber proved to be almost as fruitless, as had been the SIR ROBERT vain, but repeated, searches which wearied the legs and COTTON. Domestic Corresp. clxvii, 65, seqq. (R. H.) COTTON'S DECLINE OF HEALTH. THE ARTFUL PATIENT. perplexed the minds of Clerks of Council and of Messengers of the Secretary's office. 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. 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 Chap. II. LIFE OF SIR ROBERT MS. Harl, 7002, fol. 318; some payment beforehand. So, noble Sir, if pleas you, BOOK I, send here, by this berer, £17 and 12s., 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.' But the eye for which this naïve epistle was meant was an eye keen enough to detect the difference between corn and chaff. '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 to Sir R. Cotton (B. M.). Ib. |