Chap. II. SIR ROBERT COTTON'S FOR THE 1609. incidental interest. Out of it grew the creation of the BOOK I, new dignity of baronets. Were His Majesty, says the writer, LIFE OF now to make a degree of honour hereditary as Baronets, Corros. next under Barons, and grant them in tail, taking of every one £1000, in fine it would raise with ease £100,000; PROPOSITION and, by a judicious election, be a means to content those CREATION OF worthy persons in the Commonwealth that by the confused BARONETS, 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. The word occurs thus:- Ceux sont les estatutz, ordenances. . . . de nre 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 (B. M.) (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.* * The story which has been told--on the authority of one of John Chamberlain's letters to Carleton (April, 1612) that Sir Robert Cotton was sent out of the way' at a time when certain claims of the Baronets were to be definitively heard at the Council Board, in order that he 9 R. II. Durh. 17 July, 1385. COTTON MS., Nero D vi, § 16. BOOK I, LIFE OF SIR ROBERT Cotton to 7002, f. 380. THE POLI TICALINTER- WITH LORD 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.' 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. 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 might not produce records in their favour,' rests on mere rumour. Charles, Lancaster Herald, wrote to Cotton immediately before the hearing in these terms: 'On Saturday next the final determination is expected, if some troublesome spirit do not hinder; which end I wish were well made, and am glad that you are not seen in it at this time.”— Cotton MS., Julius, C. iii, f. 86. Chap. II. SIR ROBERT which was brought upon him by his disgraceful marriage Book 1, has barred the way to an impartial estimate of his standing as a politician. A man who was branded by his peers COTTON. (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 BOOK I, LIFE OF THE PRO JECTED SPANISH 1615. 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. What is now chiefly important in the close political conCOTTON AND nection 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. 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) the threat that, if such Cotton to a course were not taken, 'turbulent spirits of which Spain (undated) 'wanteth not-might add some hurt to the ill affairs of Harleian MS. Ireland, or hindrance to the near affecting of the great (B.M.) '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. Somerset; 7002, fol. 378. The King and the Earl of SOMERSET,' writes the 1615, Ambassador, have sent in great secrecy by Sir Robert April 18. COTTON-Who is a gentleman greatly esteemed here, and |