Robert-Cotton TREFUSIS. Frances Dingley ASCHAM. Sir John COTTON

By this William HANBURY, son-in-law of John COTTON (great grandson of the

Founder), many COTTON MSS. were alienated-partly by sale and partly by gift-to

BOOK I,
Chap. II.

THE SUC

CESSORS OF

COTTON.

The reader who glances at this pedigree will notice that some of the COTTONS of 1600-1750 were as fortunate in SIR ROBERT getting heiress-wives as had been their foregoers of preceding centuries. But their possessions were scattered almost as rapidly as they had been augmented. Conington, which was the most valued possession of Sir Robert, was less prized by his descendants. The Council Books show that some of its appendant manors and members-notably Glatton and Hulme-gave to the Founder himself a good deal of trouble. The Sequestration Books show the anxieties and losses which the busy Parliamentarians of Huntingdonshire inflicted on his next successor. Other circumstances tended also to bring the place into disfavour with owners who had a choice of seats. It lay so close to the great northern road, as to be exposed to undue demands alike from the movement of troops and from the tramping of professional vagrants. Nor was it less exposed, from its situation, to injuries by great floods. Long before the extinction of the male line, Conington was deserted, in favour of more attractive abodes in southern counties. We learn from a passage in Stukeley's Itinerary that the house was fast becoming a ruin, even in the reign of GEORGE the First; although it had been solidly rebuilt by Sir Robert himself.

DESERTION

OF THE OLD
SEAT OF

CONINGTON.

'I thought it,' writes that antiquary, 'a piety to turn half a mile out of the road, to visit Conington the seat of the noble Sir Robert CoTTON,-where he and Camden have often sat in council upon the Antiquities of Britain, and where he had a choice collection of Roman inscriptions picked up from all parts of the kingdom. I was concerned to see a stately old house of hewn stone, large and handsome, already falling into ruin.'*

Stukeley's Itinerary of Great Britain (2nd edit. 1776).

By the Statute which established the COTTON Library as a national institution, it was enacted as follows: "The Cottonian Library shall be kept and preserved, in the name and family of the COTTONS, for public use and advantage. And therefore, according to the desire of the said Sir John CoTTON, and at his request, the said Mansion House, . . . and also all the said Library, . . . together with all the Coins, Medals, and other rarities, . . . shall be vested in Trustees . . . with a perpetual succession.' The first Trustees were the Lord Chancellor SOMERS, Mr. Speaker HARLEY (afterwards Earl of Oxford), and the Lord Chief Justice, ex officio; together with Sir Robert COTTON, of Hatley St. George, Cambridgeshire; Philip COTTON, of Conington; Robert COTTON of Gedding, in Cambridgeshire, and William HANBURY, of the Inner Temple. It was provided that on the decease of any one of the four family trustees the heir male, for the time being, of Sir Robert COTTON, the founder, should appoint a successor.

The furious party-spirit which at this time divided the country into hostile camps, the leaders of which were at any moment ready to fly at each other's throats, was eminently unfavourable both to the guardianship and to the growth of the new institution; as it was, indeed, to all matters of learning or of mental culture. Hardly seven years had passed before it was found necessary to pass 'An Act for the better securing of Her Majesty's purchase of Cotton House in Westminster.'

This Act recites that since the preceding enactment of 1700 very little had been done in pursuance thereof to make the said Library useful to the Public, except what had been lately done at Her Majesty's charge;' and that the place wherein the Library then was, being a narrow little damp room, was improper for preserving the books

BOOK I,

Chap. II.

THE SUC

CESSORS OF

SIR ROBERT
COTTON.

and papers.' The Act then proceeds to declare that an agreement had been made for the purchase of Cotton House for £4,500, 'to the intent that it might be in Her Majesty's power to make this most valuable collection useful to her own subjects, and to all learned strangers.'

Within five years, however, this unfortunate Library had to be removed from Cotton House to Essex House, in the Strand (1712); and thence again, in 1730, to Ashburnham House, at Westminster (already containing the Royal collection), where it had not long been lodged, when the THE FIRE AT fire occurred by which it was so seriously injured. The HAM HOUSE. account which the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry gave to the Public, shortly after the occurrence of this calamity, runs thus:

ASHBURN

'On Saturday morning, October 23, 1731, a great smoke was perceived by Dr. BENTLEY, and the rest of the family at Ashburnham House, which soon after broke out into a flame. It began from a wooden mantel-tree taking fire which lay across a stove-chimney that was under the room where the MSS. of the Royal and Cottonian Libraries were lodged, and was communicated to that room by the wainscoat and by pieces of timber, that stood perpendicularly each end of the mantel-tree.'

upon

'They were in hope, at first,' continues the Committee, 'to put a stop to the fire by throwing water upon the pieces of timber and wainscoat, . . . and therefore did not begin to remove the books so soon as they otherwise would have done. But, the fire prevailing, Mr. CASLEY, the Deputy Librarian, took care in the first place to remove the famous Alexandrian MS. and the books under the head of Augustus' [twelve of the Cottonian presses, it will be remembered, were adorned by the heads of the twelve Cæsars, whence the still existing designations or press